In an article in the Wall Street Journal, EA's CEO John Riccitiello spoke out about the industry's lack of innovation. He says that the industry needs to push beyond the traditional gaming audience and that there need to be more sales approaches beyond the usual $50+ dollar, 40-hour games that he thinks few players beat.

"We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play," said Riccitiello.

These are bold words indeed for the head of a company which has become very rich (and somewhat infamous) for its annual sports games incarnations, like Madden, and sequels to evergreen franchises, like Medal of Honor. It also echoes sentiments from GameDaily BIZ's recent feature focusing on game length.

Riccitiello went on to praise titles like Guitar Hero, Rock Band and World of Warcraft for reaching outside of the core audience. He still doesn't think enough titles innovate, however, and doesn't mind sequels so much as he does the fact that they rarely break new ground.

"For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat," he says. "There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before."

In the past few transition years, EA has seen its fortunes sag somewhat. While the company posted sales of over $3 billion last year, income was down nearly three-fourths to $76 million. Riccitiello added that he's worried that gaming is currently "at risk of being a little less interesting than Facebook and iPods and the next cool cellphone."