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Bofferbrauer on 14 June 2015
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In a way.

Many Mainstream series are stalling in their development, probably for 2 main reasons:

First, it works that way. Never change a running system, as they say. And it's also less expensive to do so.

Also, they might fear a "they changed it, now it sucks" reaction from the series' fans.

The main problem with this is that everyone wants to cash in into a successful series' genre by creating their own knockoff product, which is why the market is flooded by shooters and why so many MMO tried to copy WoW (and quickly went under) for example.

It keeps these companies afloat and brings them good money, which is good for them. Sadly, few use this income to invest into less mainstream products. Ubisoft does so from time to time with games like Child of Light, japanese developers too (which sadly stay in japan most of the time), but EA and Activision barely do anything but milking their series and studios to death, and buy new popular IPs/Studios when needing new material.

It does have it's perks, however. All this stalling results in a very healthy Indie game scene where both new and dismissed old ideas come to life. The main problem here is the need to filter the good, bad and ugly parts of these games by yourself, as news about these games are rare and far between, and there are no real big Indie games magazines/websites where you can do so easely. Due to this they have to rely on word of mouth for their product as they get almost no Mainstream exposure or recognition.

On a personal note, this lack of development and stalling at points I don't like has almost driven me away from gaming. My last game from EA was Dragon Age: Origins, from Ubisoft, apart from Child of Light I can't even remember which one was my last title from them and for Activision Blizzard it's even Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction, and I have no Uplay, Origin or Battle.net account. I became an avid Retrogamer and Indiegamer due to this and Nintendo my only console company I even consider buying due to Virtual console, Indiegame lineup and general retro feeling of their games.

Thankfully, the outlook seems shifting more and more away from this, at least on PC. With Kickstarter and smaller developers/publishers like Stardock and Paradox Interactive new ideas and old stars are shining again, giving me a new hope that not all is lost to the mainstream community.