In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz (as pointed out by Eurogamer), EA Labels president, Frank Gibeau, has defended EA's current stable of sequels, pointing out that at this late in a gaming generation cycle new IPs have trouble "breaking through".

"If you look at the market dynamics: as much as there's a desire for new IP, the market doesn't reward new IP this late in the cycle," he said. "We have to shepherd the time that our developers spend, as well as the money that we spend on development in a positive way, so we're focused on bringing out a bunch of new IPs around the next generation of hardware. Right now, we're working on three to five new IPs for the next-gen."

EA's current-gen release manifest consists of Dead Space 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Need For Speed Most Wanted, Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel, SimCity and the EA Sports games - all of which can be considered sequels.

"When you launch a new IP it needs to do something really, really remarkable, and that's easier to do when you have a new set of technology that gives you novel capabilities," Gibeau adds. "This is the longest cycle that any of us have ever seen, and we're at the point where a little bit of fatigue has set in, and people are wondering what they can possibly do next. I've seen the machines that we're building games for, and they're spectacular."