This gen, everybody is guilty of this. RE6 is the latest game I've played that comes to mind. Good game, but it's pretty obvious what the devs were thinking. Thankfully, there are plenty of games that still get the job done.

People that play games, gaming becoming popular. If people don't play casual games, casual games don't get made.

xbox for western games becoming dumbed down. Made a lot of PC games, Deus Ex: IW, Elder Scrolls, KoToR (essentially the same D&D stuff biowares was doing forever only dumb downed), or example. All are games somewhat dumb downed. All games I like

To be fair to elder scrolls, the elder scrolls games have basically been dumb downed every game, and the best version varies between a lot of people atleast Daggerfall-morrowind-oblivion.

The people to blame are the first gamers. They were the ones who wanted to play with their new families. Thus the casual market was born.
If only they had stopped gaming at eighteen... *shakes head and curses the moon*

I watched the Microsoft E3 conference for the first time this year. I have had barely any exposure to PS1/PS2 games and none to HD games before then.

I've got to say every game looked the same. I was actually laughing by the end, I thought it was some sort of parody. Every game was, regardless of genre or story, individual quicktime action setpieces (exploding helicopters, terrorist villages) seperated by cutscenes. There was no real player choice and no distinction between horror or action or RPG except for the colour of the pixels.

I blame Hollywood. All the devs are trying to get their games as close as they can to movies for the prestige; and movies don't have interactivity or story through doing - they have showing, and telling, and explosions.

(If people don't read the first post they'll think this thread is about Wii Sports. Actually Wii Sports doesn't succumb to this as it's hard to master and different from everything else on the market when it launched. The 360 games of E3 are the truly casual games)

I blame myself because I don't have the time as I used to have when I was a kid to play games. I don't mind trying something different and probably something dumb down so I can get used to it and then probably buy more of that genre. I was never any good at fighting games, but games like King of Fighters makes it easy for you practice all those complicated moves. Before I used to get annoyed and just give up. Now, I rather just pay for games I will enjoy and not be frustrated with. Hell, I like a challenge, but I also have a real life outside of video games.

people who didn't buy Gamecube forcing Nintendo to do something drastic

THIS

YOURE ALL PAYING FOR YER GOT DAMN SINS 

I think the PS2 really started bringing console gaming to the mainstream, the Wii + Kinect kinda cemented it.

As someone said, Atari with Pong is to blame for games appealing to "casuals"

But if you mean the trend of easier gameplay, linearity, more cinema oriented. Without a doubt Sony.

No I mean science. Technology definintely made things easier. 

By science I mean applying the science in the most basic sense. Creating hypothesis from gathered information and testing the hypothesis.