One of the elements that is a key to entertaining people is novelty or surprise.  You need to be able to catch people off guard and pleasant ways and give them things they don't expect that connects with them.  If they videogame industry then feels that it has to follow a normal pattern of other industries, where you see something that works and keep offering the same over and over, then it is going to bore customers.  If you end up being like Midway, that late in the game felt they needed to come up with a WW2 based FPS title that no one was asking for, you end up like Midway, which is broke and sold off.

And, in the process of entertaining people, you need to find cost-effective ways of doing it.  If you are going to drive production costs up to get it, you are asking to go broke.  The cost of entertaining can't drive up through the roof.

Nintendo seems to get this, which is why they are successful this generation.  I have to say so, as Kirby's Epic Yarn, with me, managed to surprise me, and really catch my interest.  And 3D without glasses is another one.  I get this buzz about Nintendo that they are cool, without trying to be "cool".

I just think the industry in general maybe setting itself up for failure by expecting too much.  It would be like thinking the next Batman movie will top the Dark Knight.  Well it might, but at the same time The Dark Knight was such a high point in comic book movies that if nothing ever surpassed it I wouldn't be suprised. 2009 was kind of like that, just an amazing year with lots of growth.  Its only realistic to realize that, sure, the gaming market might not grow year over year during every single year.

I think things are thrown out of line by not moving into the next generation and instead prolonging this one.  Its probably hard for some consumers to get excited about the same consoles that have been on the market for half a decade already.  You can wave Wii Motion plus and Kinect and Move in front of their face all you want but at the end of the day if they didn't want a Wii or 360 or PS3 before I honestly doubt any of these add-ons are going to sway them over.

Like I said I just think they are expecting too much.  Nothing good lasts forever, we should just be glad games haven't crashed again, and more or less have been permanently established as a lasting form of entertainment.

Is this why all kinds of software records are being broken this gen and the console market is a lot bigger than ever before?

I'm replying to the topic title only.

I bored of most game companies. I'm 34 and been playing games since Coleco, Atari, Intellivision, Vectrix and heck even on some Pong machines. I'm BORED of most developers. I've shot thousands of bad guys in FPS/TPS. A change in the map does not make a new game. That's why most developers are so focused on Story. Because most of the time that's all i'm interested in. The game is done over so often that only the story drives a sale for me.

I love RPG I love them to death. For the life of me I'm so bored of most games I'm done. For those of you who aren't bored. I'm glad your not, but someday your going to be sitting with me as an old man who's bored.

However. Some games do draw me in. EBA, Layton, Phoenix Wright.... game that are new experiences tend to draw me back or games that are at least fun. I've logged in around 200 hrs in MHFU even with it's repation.  I lost my main focus to play FPS with Rise of the Triad. I've played a few since then, but by then they were all the same game with new weapons and maps that it was pretty dull.

/rant