Saying that a game needs to have "a revenue tail" to get major funding is basically requiring it to follow the GAAS model.
I'm no game dev, but I don't think it's a stretch at all for me to say that having to follow a particular business model to get funding has a huge impact on the type of game a dev studio wants to make, especially if the publisher you're working under has a reputation for closing down studios.
If that isn't a publisher being restrictive, then I don't know what is.
EA can be "subtle" about it however they want and call it "resource maneuvering" or whatever. I'd bet everything I own that Bioware and every other studio under EA that wants to make AAA games get the message loud and clear. Make your game GAAS or GTFO.
And I'm not condemning GAAS as a concept either. I've enjoyed a lot of games that follow the model, including single player games. But there are examples of AAA games that don't and enjoyed commercial success. They probably don't make as much as the biggest GAAS games, but surely the critical reception to AAA games like The Witcher 3, Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Horizon Zero Dawn, and God of War has paid dividends to the reputation of Projekt Red, Sony, and Nintendo.
Sure, good on EA for publishing stuff like Unravel and A Way Out, but those don't come close to having the impact that a big budget prestige title can make. They just don't seem to be interested in going down that route, probably because it's going to be "too much of a hit" to their bottomline.
To be clear, this isn't me saying Bioware shouldn't take any blame for how Anthem turned out. It's also on the devs for being overly ambitious, mismanaging the time and resources they had, missing the mark with their design goals, or a combination of all three.
I just don't agree with the portrayal of EA as a publisher that gives free reign to its AAA studios when it always comes with the caveat of "as long as the game can give us a steady stream of money well past the initial sale!"