In a recent interview with IGN, EA's Patrick Söderlund revealed that the publisher would like to create open-world action games like Assassin's Creed, Batman and Grand Theft Auto, allowing them to expand their portfolio:
"If you look at the biggest segment in our industry, which is action, we don't have a lot. EA is not known to make gigantic action games like Assassin's Creed or Batman or GTA or those types of games that are really big. The strategic direction that we put in motion is to expand our portfolio more into that segment, to see what can we bring to gamers that maybe hasn't been done before."
Söderlund continues by explaining: "I'm not suggesting we're going to go after GTA and sell 50 million units. We would love to! But what I'm saying is those types of absolutely AAA, big productions is what we want to do."
If and when we'll see any open-world games like GTA from EA remains to be seen. But large scale action games are - of course - something we'd all like to see more of.