Madden and COD do change every iteration, though. Maybe you don't play either enough to know, but they both make pretty dramatic changes every release.
The industry has always had popular mainstream games and smaller low budget titles. And the smaller titles have typically been the ones pushing new things, because the bigger titles are riskier to tinker with.
The only real change lately has been the growth of the market kind of imo creating a new category or layer of games on each end of the spectrum. You now have easily available mass quantity indie games on the cheap side and massively expensive juggernauts like your Call of Duty on the other. I don't think the expensive and "safe" massive titles hold the smaller ones back. If anything it makes those smaller titles possible. By extention you could say the big titles are responsible for innovation.
Sony said not long ago that they lose money on a lot of their games. What do you think offsets those losses? Your Uncharteds and GT games etc etc. It's like when an actor says they take the big budget flick with less acting depth required type of job so they can make the money to fund or make up for smaller more artistic roles.







