As you might have noticed, EA has largely divested itself of its past devotion to the dark art of nonstop sequel production, in favor of trying a few new properties on for size. In the cases of Dead Space and Battlefield: Bad Company, that endeavor has yielded some damn good games. And even if Army of Two faltered a bit, it's certainly sold well enough thus far.
More importantly, the EA chaps are talking about the likelihood--scratch that, the certainty--of more games hitting the shelves under these particular franchise banners. It's not just in the cards, it's happening, like, for sure! You can expect Dead Space 2, Bad Company 2, and Army of Two...uh, 2 forthcoming from EA at some point. With better titles than those, hopefully.
Even Mirror's Edge, which isn't on shelves for another two weeks, is just the first of a planned trilogy. My fingers are crossed that the first game turns out OK enough to warrant two sequels.
The obvious thing would be to mock EA here for making some new franchises and then turning right around and serializing them, but you know, ragging on EA for its development practices is starting to feel both unjustified, and more than a little passé. So let's just close with this encouraging quote from Gibeau indicating this admirable trend will continue.
...we need to methodically add new IPs every year and start to change the balance of the portfolio away from being overweighted on sports and movie licenses and toward things like "The Sims..."
The Variety story has some other interesting tidbits about The New EA, including a Dead Space movie and the company's multimedia approach to marketing, so check that out if you're interested.