Stuff like this is sad, because not only does it shy people away from buying games they might like (unless they're the type that "roll over and take it"), but it also harms the developers too. I mean, some of you have talked about MW3 and supporting Bioware, who would otherwise miss out because of these EA shenanigans.
I mean, this has made me reconsider buying Battlefield 3, despite being blown away by QuantumDelta's video of the flight stuff on his YouTube channel (I wasn't sure whether I was going to buy it anyway, but I looked at this "Origin" thing on my computer to see what it was - I have NFS Shift, Hot Pursuit 2k10 and Shift 2 so that's probably how it found itself there - and saw on the update screen "REQUIRED FOR BATTLEFIELD 3). And I'm seriously considering getting a Wii so was thinking of having a look at the Wii version of NFS Nitro.
Also, in regards to why people still buy EA stuff, I would assume that some people simply don't know about stuff like this. Heck I wouldn't have known if I hadn't decided to look in this thread.