User blog comment:Damac1214/What I'm looking forward to with the Next-Generation of video games/@comment-3171236-20130226220036/@comment-3171236-20130301202919

They might not have absolute control over the devs as publisher, but they do have quite big of a say in the development of a game.

For example, with Battlefield 3, EA focused heavily on it being a "COD Killer". To this end, they switched primary system focus to consoles instead of PC, and took quite a few ques from Activision (linear levels, scripted sequences, QTE).

EA's games are all very influenced by their publaiher, regardless of what the devs say.