Roughly 11,500 industry layoffs since late 2008

[cAPSLOCK]

jarrod said:
...maybe focusing on DS/PSP/Wii is the way to go?

Pretty much.

The population of mainstream gamers hasn't grown that much (if at all), certainly not enough to justify the enormous jump in development costs from last gen. Hell for all we know for certain the population of that type of gamer may have gotten smaller. It would definitely explain the ridiculous levels of sequelitis and safe moves this generation.

The funny thing is now people are talking about 3D gaming being the future of games as if that won't jack up development costs to the point where there's even less games and less companies making them.

So yes, I think this gen was a mistake overall. There wasn't enough HD penetration at the beginning to justify making HD consoles, and they should have gone with something more easily sustainable and saved the HD jump for the 2011/2012 generation.

Of course now this generation is going to go on for a long time, but not before the industry receives a super-mega-enema for heading face first down a path no one was really ready for financially.