"The place where you have the opportunities for growth is within the communities of franchises we control."
Is that why you maim the fuck out of every developer in your company that isn't working on one of your cash cows (a few after they get their titles out)? Isn't that counter productive if you want GROWTH?! Shouldn't you focus on either expanding on a good idea from a new IP they produce or just getting more IPs out there to look for a huge untapped audience. Hell, look at Ubisoft, the other "evil" publisher (they get it for their DRM rather than malicious intentions and from what I've seen EA's dropped out of the race these days). The got Assassin's Creed out there, and despite a shaky beginning, were able to not only grab a large market (though to be fair, Ubisoft was chasing all the markets Assassin's Creed was aimed at before with stuff like Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, and a huge variety of historical action games, some of which were set in medieval times, so it might have been more just finally hitting the right mix and then polishing it to keep the market).
Point is, it's ok to keep a franchise alive, but that isn't your sole focus, as if you really want to grow rather than just hit a limit and stay there forever, you need to keep finding new outlets (and you missed the big low risk good payoff one here, Activision that you could a small indie studio working on and produce a huge amount of games for, several of which you could slowly evolve into a franchise).
