The point of this IS to understand why people hate them. If I understood, I wouldn't have asked.

On another point, it's not absurd to ask "Why not THQ", or "Why not Sega". The point I was trying to make is why single out EA if so many publishers have the same practices. Sega doesn't buy developers and destroy franchises people care about.

I'm understanding the points of buying out smaller developers and spewing out sub standard sequels. Fine. But what about the lazy rehashes argument?  Consider this:  A company as large as EA with as many developers and teams as EA is still churning out shovelware, buggy games, and doing very little innovation of its own.  EA's number 1 absolute priority is making money.  You may think every developer has this priority, but most also have quality in there somewhere.  EA doesn't.  EA couldn't face Sega's NFL 2K back in the day because their Madden game wasn't good enough.  Their solution wasn't to make the game better, rather it was to buy exclusive licensing.  The fact that Madden changes so little between generations is indicative of their laziness.  They can't make good games so they buy games and put the other guys they can't buy out of business.

If EA rehashes 40 games and the next guy rahashes only 20, does it really make the other guy much better? Sports games are by nature meant to be rehashed yearly. It's been the practice for many years. 2K Sports does it. Konami does it. THQ does it. It's common practice. Those people that play sports games usually accept the fact that if they don't take the few updates that can be created in twelve months on a sports game, they won't recieve the much needed roste update. For anyone that plays these games, it's the most important part.  Like I said, the problem isn't rehashing.  It's innovation.  Consider the difference between Madden 2003 and 2007 compared to the difference between Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy.

As far as other games, Def Jam was a great fighting series and EA was smart enough to hand the reins over to AKI, whom are geniuses. Dead Space is shaping up to be awesome. Skate completely blew away Tony Hawk on it's first try. Facebreaker looks to be the best arcade boxer since Punch Out, and Fight Night was the best boxing series in a long time. The Orange Box was on the short list for game of the year, and was a gift to gamers with so much material within. EA showed the Wii a lot of early love when other companies turned their backs (Madden 07, Godfather and Medal of Honor Heroes 2). Maybe Pandemic moving to EA will finally allow them to finish Mercenaries 2, which is way delayed right now. Burnout is the best racing game on earth by many, including myself.  The problem is that EA isn't responsible for most of the good games you think of.  EA is the PUBLISHER of many games; not developer.  For a look at what EA is capable of itself, look at the PS3 version of Orange Box that its own developers so badly f@#$ed up.  EA churns out 50+ games a year so it's not hard to imagine that they may not mess up one or two, but that's more along the lines of getting lucky than actual quality.  Their crap to quality ratio is awful.

The point isn't that EA is great, because they're not. They're shady, imperfect and make horrible decisions. My point is, so does everybody else. Why pick on EA's practices when so many are doing the same thing. Because they've done it more times, or more often? Why does that matter? Once you do bad business, you're guilty.  When those other bad developers are releasing 40+ buggy shovelware games a year, let me know.  When those other developers have the enormous budget of EA and automatic publishing EA's status as a developer/publisher brings as well as the dual profit areas, and STILL continue to churn out crap, let me know.  EA has the resources to do better and there are a couple diamonds in the rough in its lineup.  However, as long as churning out crap continues to make them money, you'll never see them be anything but a mockery in the gaming community.

What were the polished EA games from 5+ years ago?