The begining of the end? And what would that be? I any case it only took like 20 years.

I don't see it happening.  People just like shooting things.

It's a good way of relieving stress for some people.  Some people play FPS, some "watch" porn, and some do both.

@robzo  I honestly dont think people see those services that way, if they do, they are ignorant and missing out on some fantastic stuff. IMHO those services have games made by small dev teams that dont have the finances to go to the "big leagues". Or the games are to small that putting them on full retail disc. Stacking is game that is just as good if not better than some of the retail releases. Flower, Limbo, Beat Trip, Wipeout HD, Castle Crashers, Scott Pilgrim. The list goes on and on, their loss i guess

As for rail shooters, of all the genres born in the arcade they have had the worst transition to home consoles. Id hate to admit it, but i dont see how you can really add to the experience, those games are designed to be short and to take your money. You could say the same about beat em ups, but you can add to that experience increasing longivity. Hell they all have RPG elements anyway, and for all the crap you could do in Warriors it was just a 3d Streets of Rage when its all said and done. So when people say that they dont wanna spend full price for those games, i can see why. BTW if you got Wii give Zombie panic in Wonderland a go, its pretty much a tamer, cheaper Sin and Punishment but its still fun

@phoenixs wright  are you serious only decent 2d platformer on DS??? SOnic says hi as does Princess Peach. As does Yoshi, as does Kirby Mario sold cause his name is Mario, had it been the same game with a completely different character it would not have sold half

and the really talented ones can do both at the same time!

The end of the FPS spam.. Its been going on since 2007 with COD4..

Barely changed at all? Yea the core of the genre is "gun in hand shoot stuff" just like platformers are "jump stuff collect things" but that doesn't mean it haven't changed or that it can't bring new fresh ideas just look at Portal or how Bordelands and Fallout merge it with RPG.

I agree, it is their loss.  But in the end it becomes the medium's loss, because the genres that require smaller budget and development end up having that  second class stigma.  As much hype as World of Goo got, I think it would have a higher chance at popularity if it was a hard copy to pick up your local game store, and perhaps marketed with standard advertisments like the other AAA titles.  

When you say Portal as an FPS you make me think of Metroid Prime in that both games are FPS only as a complimentary/secondary genre.  Metroid Prime is an odd mix between puzzle, adventure, and shooter.  And Portal is clearly a puzzle more than a traditional shooter.

So yes they use an element of the FPS genre and sell succesfully, but a genre is not known by simply a few elements that make it up.  the biggest element those games take from FPS is the POV perspective.  The genre as we know it today is a very specific offshoot of FPS, one that is very narrow because it is often based in ultra realistic scenarios that don't allow for as much leeway in developer creativity as a non-realistic FPS.

That kind of offshoot I think is at risk for dying down.  No doubt though that certain elements by themselves may never die or could be utilized in another genre effectively.

@robzo100  World at Goo would have stood a better chance at retail, i think the WiiWare service is the least used of the three so i dont think they see as much traffic as the PSN and especially Live so that could hurt it, but i dont think this will change. Especially with IPhones on the scene this whole DL is not going away, the best we can hope for is for people to not be ignorant and try to give these games a chance.

I agree with your inclusive points but I think your letting the "bigness" of COD cloud your perception. YOu say that FPSs might go back to the less realistic aspects of days past??? Dude, its already happening. These devs arent stupid, they know they cant screw with the military FPS beast that is COD, so what do you do??? U take a different approach. Bulletstorm, Rage, Conduit, Goldeneye, Crysis, Resistance, Killzone???, Bioshock, Darkness 2, Xcom, those are all games that are not realisitc. IMHO i think we let COD blind us to what the genre REALLY offers. There is far more uniqueness than we give credit for Hell ive just seen the Duke Nukem Forever trailer and i swear it looks like they just took the old game and upped the graphics. it just screams 90s