Riccitiello made an example out of EA LA's Tiberium, a squad-based shooter set in the Command & Conquer universe, when it was cancelled last month. "When you burn the omelette, you don't serve it," he said in a Gamasutra interview.

In the same interview, Riccitiello specifically countered concerns from analysts that the cancellation signalled problems inside the publisher. "It's a perverse notion--beyond perverse, bizarre, upside down, illogical, stupid to state that we've killed a project that wasn't going to yield what we thought wasn't a high enough quality product as indicative of problems."

Returning to conventional CEO-speak, he said, "This is a perfect example of EA investing in quality."