Electronics Arts consistently belongs to the upper echelon of video game publishers of the new millennium despite not having much to show in one of the industry's largest genres. That being said, gaming studios like Rockstar and Ubisoft should brace themselves as EA recently revealed that it has plans to expand into the "gigantic action" game genre.

EA vice president Patrick Soderlund admitted to IGN the company doesn't have a lot in the AAA action game department, but all that will be rectified soon.

"If you look at the biggest segment in our industry, which is action, we don't have a lot. EA is not known to make gigantic action games like Assassin's Creed or Batman or GTA or those types of games that are really big. The strategic direction that we put in motion is to expand our portfolio more into that segment, to see what we can bring to gamers that maybe hasn't been done before."

His statements come off as no surprise since EA's upcoming action-adventure third-person shooting game "Star Wars Battlefront" has all the makings of a massive open-world RPG.

It should be noted that the sci-fi title is co-developed by Visceral Games and Motive Studios. The former is the gaming studio that brought us "Battlefield: Hardline" and the "Dead Space" series while the latter is an upstart company founded by none other than Jade Raymond, co-creator of the early "Assassin's Creed" games.

Asked if his statement was a confirmation that fans can expect a string of open-world games from EA moving forward, Soderlund said that it is a possibility but the company isn't solely focused on upstaging the competition.

"I'm not suggesting we're going to go after GTA and sell 50 million units. We would love to! But what I'm saying is those types of absolutely AAA, big productions is what we want to do. And I think for us to do that, we need the right people."

Soderlund also reiterated EA is committed to investing on new intellectual properties, something the company has been adamant about for years.

EA Chief Operations Officer Peter Moore told GameSpot in August the company's collaboration with Raymond's Motive Studios, in particular, would help EA build a new IP.

"EA is a great place for where Jade's career is at right now; she has a great vision for what she believes the future of IP is. She is great at bringing the best out of development teams. She manages classic, high quality, triple-A projects with big budgets, and brings them in on time and on quality," he said.

Are you excited for EA's big plans? Head down to the comment section below and tell us what you think.