Sadly it's the way of the world now. We've had a good few discussions recently about how it's just about money now, with the gameplay and VFM being a complete afterthought.
When I was young (niiiii mothballs and pee) coders made games as a hobby. Many of the games out on the market were made by hobbyist coders doing it from passion to make a game they wanted to see. They could then be had really cheaply, some of the Mastertronic games were like, £1.99. These were simply games that they had produced for hobbyist coders. Some of them were bloody brill though !
As time went on the boundaries were being pushed left right and center. New ideas, new level designs and so on. Even some really whacky games that were just awesome.. Wheelie comes to mind. A platform game with you on a motorbike doing awesome stunts lol.
Sadly as gaming began to bring in the cash the corporations stood up and took note. Companies like Atari and Activision were bought out by corporations who then used them as milking machines. Games are becoming worse whilst prices rise. New ideas being put into games now are not there for out pleasure, but there to make more money from the game. I refuse to buy any Activision EA or Atari games now. Simply as they are just cash ins. Activision milked Tony Hawk for every penny they could until they completely destroyed the franchise, then found another killer app. They now have Call of duty as their main tit, and will pull on it until they absolutely destroy the series.
The problem is that people have fallen for it left right and center. The money they use to promote and push these games is just crazy, but people buy into it like sheep. See also - Apple Ipod/pad/phone. They just seem to have this hold over people where they must rush out and get the newest model. You can safely add GPU manus to that too.
It really upset me when Duke Forever got slated and compared to COD. That was just really insulting. Duke had soul in the game, and years and years of development. And you could feel it, if you knew what you were looking for. Most of the COD crowd loaded it up and said "Graphics are sh** what a sh** game !" and "COD is much better !".
But they missed the boat completely. Duke is FUN. All the way through I was cracking up. The jokes and humour are never ending.Yet, Activision have just pushed belligerence onto the public now and Duke is apparently old and not funny at all.
EA have got hold of Battlefield now. And no doubt they will get a hold on DICE's balls and squeeze as hard as they can until the ballsack is empty, before moving onto another "killer app cash cow".