In-Sourcing and Breaking Licensing...

Interesting read. It seems that EA learned from the mistakes of others during the early days of the NES, SNES, and Genesis. Thank goodness for them the DMCA hadn't been passed yet.

GameDaily BIZ: EA's Bing Gordon on Game Design Education, Industry Challenges & More

In some cases, EA is outsourcing, and in some cases we are "in-sourcing" to EA employees in other locations.

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EA's biggest risk was preparing to launch a lineup of games for the
Sega Genesis without a license. We reverse-engineered the electronics
in a "clean room" environment, because Sega wouldn't give us licensee
terms that we could live with. If this had not worked, and the games
hadn't sold, (Sega agreed to license terms the evening before our
public introduction of games), EA would probably have gone the way of
early computer game leaders like Broderbund and Sierra. It was truly a
"bet the company" decision.