Name a Stupid Trend in Gaming That You Think Needs to Stop.

[Reasonable]

starcraft said:

Reasonable said:
QTEs - enough already, they're shit, even in God of War, and distract from the game

Exclusive DLC - either make the game exclusive and commit to a single platform or don't, especially when only making extra bits available on one platform, but don't mess the end consumer around with this stuff

Timed exclusives - again, either commit to exclusive or don't, but don't mess the end consumer around with this stuff

Really annoying fanboys (or fanfolk to be gender neutral) - friendly rivalry and ribbing is one thing, but enough with the extreme console support already, it's stupid

Both of these things help to differentiate the HD consoles which I think is positive. However I do agree with you in cases where the companies lied to consumers about the existence of other versions of games that they clearly had already planned.

But it isn't jerking consumers around if well before a game's launch you say "this version will receive DLC, and this one will not."

 

 

I disagree.  The average consumer isn't checking that out on the net.  While companies should differentiate I always believe it should be controlled to prevent using tactics that unfairly penalize the end consumer.

In short, you shouldn't buy a game like Fallout 3 on PS3 then discover PS3 version has level cap at 20 and 360 has level cap of 30 (as will be the case after Broken Steel).  Similarly 360 Mirror's Edge owners shouldn't be in the position that the PS3 has extra levels.

Timed exclusives are in a sense a denial of service approach - preventing end consumer buying games when they want to.

IMHO exclusives need to be clear cut and full game.  Anything else is only helping the console provider and negatively impacts end consumers.