Yesterday, Electronic Arts announced two new publishing deals for a couple potentially promising titles from high-profile developers. One deal involves a new action title from Epic Games and the other is for a new action horror game from famous Japanese developers Shinji Mikami and Goichi Suda.

And while this move was generally cheered by gamers on message boards, from a financial standpoint some analysts continue to question EA's strategy. Signal Hill's Todd Greenwald commented, "Why the need for more distribution deals? [These deals] speak to EA's marketing and publishing strengths, but doesn't say much for their development talent. We continue to be concerned to see how much top-line growth is coming from low-margin distribution deals out of EA Partners, such as Harmonix/MTV, Valve, id Software, and now both Epic Games and Grasshopper Manufacture."

During E3 GameDaily BIZ asked EA Games label president Frank Gibeau, who manages the EA Partners business, about the low-margin distribution deals, which have been pointed to by other analysts in the past, and Gibeau saw no negative in the distribution business. "It's a booming business for us," he said in our exclusive interview. "We have some great partners with id and Valve and Harmonix and others. So I'm not embarrassed by the business; I think it's a strength. No one else has a business of that scale or capability."

Another notable EA announcement yesterday – and a sign of the growing importance of digital distribution – was the company's decision to bring Burnout Paradise as a digital download to the PlayStation Network. "We believe EA's upcoming launch of Burnout Paradise on the PlayStation Network is a positive margin driver and hopefully a sign of things to come," commented Greenwald. "EA plans to make Burnout available for digital download on the PlayStation 3, at a $29.99 price point. We believe this is indicative of EA's direct-to-consumer push, and is a warning sign for packaged goods retailers. At $29.99, this strikes us as an attractive alternative to the packaged good product, and serves two purposes for EA - generates a higher margin (no manufacturing costs, and no 20% cut to retailer), and keeps the discs out of the dreaded used games bins."