I think EA needs to fire more people, and figure out the problems with the ones you have.
There are two groups I can namely think that's been hurting them - Its their fact-finders and the PR team. Whoever gathers their facts simply does not go deep enough, and whoever comes up with whatever ideas like Sin to Win or that commercial with the moms is hurting EA way more than anything else. I'd go as far as firing all but two PR members, and then make their ideas require approval from the actual public; it's going to be hard to pass ideas this way, but what it does is give them a constant dose of reality when making these decisions. EA also needs to watch out for yes-men in their ranks; it's not going to help if they've got people who are too afraid or cannot defend themselves to say no to anything. Find these yes-men, find the cause of their inability to logically decide, and deal with that cause. If that cause is somebody who's kept things at an even keel, EA should still get rid of them - They've resorted to fear and supremacy so they can maintain that order.
Office morale is no doubt another cause. After EA_Spouse's letter, there is a dark clouds hanging over all of EA's developer offices. Nobody wants to feel like a prisoner to their work, and poorly-treated and poorly-recognized developers only result in overall bad performance and poor morale. This poor recognition, performance, and morale is considerably part of the reason why EA's recent games have essentially crashed and burned with bursts of player negativity emanating from them - Who wants to do their best on a game they won't be recognized for, or worse lambasted by the public over, for a game that requires teams of several hundred people?
Finally, here's something EA really needs to revalue. It's something that is basically driving everyone mad, be it the remaining players of their games or their development houses. It's EA's time constraints; they should just stop such ludicrously short lengths, and TAKE. THEIR. TIME. We're happy to be patient, hell probably even happier if the game development scene would slow down a little so we can actually have time to play all the new releases! Longer timelines for games, despite their the costs, means refinement and more experimentation with mechanics. Refinement and experimentation means better gameplay and re-engineering certain game mechanics that would be poorly defined or need expansion. Expanded and improved mechanics and better gameplay means happier people. Happier people is what EA is trying to aim for, and all it took was more time! In fact, if EA would banish the annual release model, I'd expect company morale to immediately rise.
So tl;dr, EA needs to: Fire almost all of their fact-finders and PR team, get rid of the yes-men (or their overly authoritative superiors), deal with the morale/team size problem, and take their time with promising games.
Or they could get their stockholders to care. How many of those stockholders really care of the quality of the game, and how many just want profits at the expense of everything else?
