They aren't arguably the biggest third party publisher. They ARE without argument the second-biggest, after Activision Blizzard.
I have mixed feelings on them. I like titles such as EA Sports - NHL in particular - and I love the Bioware games that they purchased.
As a company I don't really like them because they have a corporate goal of buying up everything they can and getting as close to a monopoly as possible. That's within their rights, of course, but other publishers - even Activision - don't seem to take that strategy. They just make games and hope for the best. EA also heavily monotizes everything, and they are the originators of the 'annual' game, titles with little added value for the consumer but we buy every year. I have concerns that they're going to go down that road with my beloved Bioware games and milk them, especially with the co-founders gone. Those games were about art before, now I fear they will just become regular titles milking the creativity of others.
I also don't like their industry manipulation. Dating back to the SNES/Genesis days, EA manipulated Sega because Sega needed them and then when they got what they wanted made inferior ports for SNES in an attempt to make the Nintendo platform look worse. This sort of platform manipulation is part of their strategy to become the industry's biggest and most influential company, and I find it sneaky and misleading to consumers. It continues to this day, and the latest debacle with Nintendo and EA saying Wii U is a wonderful patform and they are bringing their games to it...until Nintendo decided the didn't want to give EA the Wii U's entire online system and then suddenly Frostbite 2 can't even work on it and Wii U is getting token late ports. It's lies and garbage and it's dirty business.
So I like many of their games but don't like their business practices as a company.
