I get the sinking feeling that EA's time and money has grown impatient with investing in new franchise and ideas. Dead Space and Mirror's Edge where both highly praised as being a breath of fresh air, but between them they didn’t manage 5 million units which Dead Space alone well deserved to reach.

I guess gamers have no-one but themselves to blame really. We cried for EA to try new stuff and when they did nobody bought them. Maybe that's a little unfair as Dead Space did a few million at retail but my understanding is that Mirror's Edge didn’t make a massive profit. Brutal Legend is a more recent example as last months NPD data showed that it didn't even make the top 10 in its launch month despite high reviews and quite the marketing campaign.

I don’t think we will see some sort of evil EA 2.0 emerge; they are still investing in loads of great titles and show no signs of backing down from them. However its proven how big a risk new IPs are and unfortunately it’s likely to make publishers think even harder about investing in them.