EA has grown so large they will "Challenge Everything" in their path that goes against their profit margin.
However I find it hard to believe its hard for small studios to have success. If the studio develops a good product and releases it to the masses on the internet or xbox live arcade, or the number of homebrew scenes, you will get attention. You just have to make a good product.
IMHO, some of the best games lately are free or not the latest and greatest. Corporate big wigs are pushing mainstream games into a corner and beating them a lead pipe for every bit of control over the flow of money and players. Activision and EA Corporate Big Wigs have fubared Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (tm) and Bad Company 2. Both games will suffer in the long run with lack of an SDK for the modding community. There is also a lack of dedicated server files, which remove the option for hosting your own game servers. The communities have spoken loud, and the developers do here this. Infinity Ward and Dice have already lost employees because they disagree with EA and Activision's control and greed.
In the end I am very loyal to the companies which remain respectful to its fans and work with the people, and not for the money.
Valve, iD, 3dRealms, are just a number of companies that are more concerned with producing a good game, and sharing the success all around. Love to 3rd party developers with SDK's, love to the players for not charging massive amounts of money for DLC, just good old love for developers.
In retrospect, I'm sorry for the abused developers all over. But they have a choice, and they choose to endure that reality. But some will choose to break off and make a startup. Valve was created by 2 former Microsoft employees, and they started small, and look at them now. They have produced games, software, and contributed to the community with massive amounts of information, and content to award the player, and the developers (both in house and 3rd party). Same goes for Epic Megagames, which continue to release Unreal Tournement games, with updated fresh engines. Id Software will continue to produce the next Doom and Quake. (Where it all began.) 3dRealms if I remember correctly has gone under, but I pray to god someone buys the Duke Nukem Forever project and finishes it soon. To quote Steve Ballmer: "Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers"
Now I need to get back to my job... as a developer. [I apologize if I was unorganized or off topic]