I missed this thread during offseason. ><
Fwiw, EA is a publisher, especially to the 2 products you've mentioned.
Kingdoms of Amalur (the company that actually developed this went out of business)
Syndicate was developed by
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbreeze_Studios (star breeze who brought you thillers such as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chr...om_Butcher_Bay)
My point is, that no one who wrote a line of code, or did a pixel of artwork, was payed by EA. (Roundabout they were since the publishing deal front-loads money to the developer)
The 12 cycle of football games were the worst offering for gen3 to date =*(. It caused the entire upper management team of the football products to change. (heads did roll)
In the case of NCAA(Tiburon a studio wholly owned by EA) EA could be called directly responsible failures of the title.
Fwiw, this years offering of football titles plays much better. It also didn't have the PSN shut down for 3 weeks during the final month of testing.