Nintendo did change things! You will see even greater reaches for the casuals from everyone this gen. Microsoft released Scene It?! ha ha and with huge games like rock band, guitar hero, and mario party, those games are defining this gen more than anything elese. Those games would have been largely ignored before

I think is because it allowed you to do more with the environment. Basically better graphics since the view is basically fixed and hasn't changed since wolfenstein 3-D. I mean you couldn't look at your feet with Bioshock but that didn't matter since everything else was just so gorgeous. I think it might just be alot easier to program for then 3rd person etc.

thats why the third party devs are so against wii - cos the FPS are such no brainers and the wii requires imagination even though i'm the biggest FPs fan i'm also so bored of them.

The biggest innovative step the 360 devs have done recently is step to third party with gears of war I mean take the FPS out of the 360 library and whats left?

thats why i'm looking forward to playing mass effect

FPSs are not the norm on consoles (nor are they very good on consoles). There are still more 3rd person view games out and they tend to be better.

I think part of it is that FPS games have just got to the point that they are incorporating more important elements of gameplay (size, storyline, unique elements to the genre) that make them huge, and popular.

Not only this, FPS games is *the* American genre. It started a long, long time ago with games like Wolfenestien 3d, Rise of the Triad and of course, Doom. But it then wiggled it's way into other genres such as RPGs with uber-games like Betrayl at Krondor (one of the best FPS RPGs ever made. But it did incorporate isometric combat, but the outside view was entirely FPS), Elder Scrolls series, Might & Magic and such.

So we see so much of it because it's nearly exclusively Western. If you were in Japan, you wouldn't be saturated as much because it's not their game.

Despite that, there are vastly more non-FPS titles out there for any system. Even on the X360, maybe 15% of games are played through a FPS view.

Wolfenstein, DOOM, Quake, Unreal, etc etc were the best games of their era. Starting with DOOM, you could frag friends or strangers on your 28.8 modem and it was the most fun you could have without having people over. Until last November, I hadn't bought a console since that point because the PC was where it was at. It was a pretty obvious choice for a lot of hardcore gamers. FPS looked horrible and played horrible on consoles. A lot of people have great memories of GoldenEye, the gameplay was fantastic, but the graphics really sucked compared to the PC equivalents of the time. PCs have the problems of frequent hardware changes, non-techy people don't know how to read systems requirements, the main PC hardware manufacturers (Dell, Compaq, etc) saved people money by using outdated/horribe video and sound cards, etc. Hypothetically speaking, if the PC was a standardized plug and play console, the Playstation and N64 would have died the day Quake II (or maybe Unreal Tournament) was released. That also leaves out the awesome real time strategy games that consoles never had. Fastforward to today and the FPS on consoles are almost as good as those on the PC. The only thing they were lacking last gen was the controls. Now the Wii remote and PS3 (allowing for a keyboard and mouse) have finally leveled the playing field. In fact most FPS get made for consoles first and then ported to the PC. So when did FPS become the norm? I would say for the PC when DOOM came out. For consoles, I'd say Halo. Halo was the first really popular FPS that anybody could pick up and play. FPS have been the most popular genre of late and unfortunately that means there are two many choices and the gameplay is starting to get stale. Perhaps platforming or RTS games will take over once again.

Since Duke Nukem 3D, no one has looked back. Hail to the king baby!

I'm waiting for a non-FPS new IP to blow the world away.

Everyone saw the success of Halo and said "we can do better". So now there is a flood of sci fi FPs games with dudes in astronaut suits. ( Crysis, Haze, Time shift, killzone, etc)

When I used to spend all night playing quake on a 56k modem with 200 ms ping times.