You heard correctly. EA is a joke and no other company consistently makes such mediocre games with such high production costs. If they took the money they spent on gimmicks (like hiring B grade actors for a video game) and advertising (Mercenaries 2 gas station gimmick for a buggy liner and boring PS2 port) and put more effort into innovation, then spent the rest of that time and money on polishing the game, maybe it could have been something much better. Innovation isn't even a word in EA's vocabulary. However the word "Average" is the most prevalent among all EA titles. Games that are innovative and new prove to be the IP that EA acquired from buying out other companies and almost never comes internally.
In short what should we expect? EA, Ubisoft and to a lesser extent Activision have become a plague in the industry with unoriginal, linear, buggy and just plain awful games that dominate not for their quality but their quantity. I don't know the full statistics but you can bet at least 75% of all video games come from those three studios.
I'm tired of these crap games and sequels and don't bother even buying many games anymore, attaching Sony's InSecuROM makes the decision all the more easier. I rarely by games anymore because of these three studios domination, flooding the market with utter ****.The last game I bough before Fallout 3 (Which sneakily came laden with Sony's Rootkit DRM, had I known I would have passed) was The Orange Box. Soon there will be a video game duopoly or even monopoly and innovation will be stifled completely.
I am actively boycotting EA, Ubisoft and Sony and have been for over 3 years. These companies only care about money and not for their customers. They only care to put effort into maintaining a stranglehold on the market and not in making good products. As of late it sounds like Epic games is going down that same path too.