Hardware went main stream but it was bound to happen due to the rise in populatity with gaming. Over the past 5 years gaming has exploded in size in the number of people playing a type of game. Back when it was either console or pc, rpg or fps. now its console, pc, facebook, browser, iphone, android, tablets, etc etc etc. its something like gaming growing from 300 million to 1 billion over the last few years because of "Causal gaming".
So the games industry is riding high and is worth more than ever. Companies are going to make stuff that people want and going after the "mainstream" is not what you think it is. Going after the mainsream is creating an product that an large potion of the market wants to buy, for example SONY in 1995 released an console called the PS1 it was hailed as the first Mainstream console because of price point and technology and was simply what people wanted.
Now when it comes to console/core pc games going after the mainstream in the case of an first person shooter is going after the entire fps fanbase which is one of the biggest fanbase in the current console/pc core market. Publishers are trying to make an game that everyone enjoys, and the only sucess has been call of duty. So naturally being an huge sucess others want the pie and are flooding the market with there own games to get there share of the pie. Only problem is that they are flooding the market with mostly poor quality and clones and sooner or later the market is going to crash and bring an publisher down (cough activison). If they are going at this pace the market will crash adn burn or continue to push on and simple stick with call of duty or move on to another or another group of titles.
who knows and only time will tell.
Of Course That's Just My Opinion, I Could Be Wrong
