Electronic Arts has a huge following because of what they did for the industry during my early and pre-teen years. Right when I was in the market for buying games, they made them look like record albums. A little flat box just like you'd buy the latest music. The artist's name was on the cover, usually signed in fact. (I go back and read this node later and see I said "artist" instead of "programmer." I didn't even notice that when I first wrote it, but it's definitely an indication of what Electronic Arts thought of their programmers.)
They released MULE, Archon, Hardhat Mack, and Pinball Construction Set in this format ... All of which are remembered fondly by old geeks like me. The prices were also such that you could convince your parents to pick you up a game when you visited the mall, if you did your chores and your homework and behaved especially well. (Sometimes it worked, darn it.) They're also the only ones alive from this "Golden Age" (from about 1979 to 1992) that still is its own company.
They were founded in 1982 with a personal investment of $200,000 by Trip Hawkins and a group of other people. Trip Hawkins was to EA, what Steve Jobs was to Apple, so he's the only name that almost anyone remembers. (He left EA to found 3DO) They went through several names, but settled on Electronic Arts in homage to United Artists. (They almost settled on Electronic Artists, but Hawkins convinced them that the PROGRAMMERS were the Artists, the company only published the art, tell me that you don't admire THAT!)
Most of their games were aimed at the Atari 800 and Apple II, and eventually they started publishing for the Commodore 64 when that hit the market. (Which is what saved them, the C64 being one of the best darn game computers out there.) They did also publish for the IBM PC, which I am thankful for to this day.
Oh, and for geek fun: Look at the old covers of your games and see if you can spot the cube-sphere-cone symbol on the various games. They've hidden it on all of their flat box games.
If you want to see more about the Arts Era of Electronic Arts, then read this article: http://gamasutra.com/features/20070216/fleming_01.shtml