FPSRPG + MMOFPS

Basically anything with a Gun and a camera in the pc head its going to be the hit thing with every other genre merging into it.

A Halo MMO I think would seriously kick ass and be a real cash king for Microsoft (not that it isn't already so :P)

Like imagine Halo Reach but MMO and if 343 supports it like Blizzard supports WoW, I think you can definitely see a real big success there.

The downside of that would be that you wont see another Halo main game for a longgggggggggg time like Blizzard and Warcraft IV, which we'll never know if it'll ever be even greenlit.

a mixture of FPS-RPG-SANDBOX

Interesting comments. I guess when I said the dominating genre I meant genres that had the most frequent releases and which sold the most. A new FPS is out every week now (so it seems) so I consider the genre to 'dominate' now. Also, when I said sandbox for PS2 era it was because other games tried to be like GTA (Jak 2 for instance) and GTA was the highest selling/most popular.
I like the MMO ideas; as long as it is free to play (or a low fee) I could buy into that.

I would like to see something like generic action games. By that I mean games like Batman and Assassin's Creed where the focus isn't shooting, but you're just controlling your dude and you have a metric fuckton of options.

Think about it: in a shooter, your first, 2nd, and 3rd option is generally to shoot. Not a lot of ways to manipulate the world or anything, just a screen with a gun the bottom of it. Take a game like Batman AA and you can add all kinds of different elements to it be it stealth or brawling or any number of things. What made platformers so popular was that really the themes and possibilities are endless. The same can be said if you look at the very basic structure of games like Batman AA and AssCreed.

I find it a little odd this avenue hasn't been explored to a greater degree, just because you can do so many things with it and so many different directions you can take it.

JRPG's time has come and gone, that much should be obvious at this point. I imagine another generation and they'll be like shmups or fighting games in their level of niche appeal.

The FPS genre will always be around because they're relatively easy to make from a mechanical perspective and they can picked up and understood by new and veteran gamers.

I say bring on crazy 3rd person action games where you have far more options than just killing.

Looking among the 36 90+ rated 360 games

There are 6 FPS: Bioshock, Orange Box, COD4, MW2, Halo 3 and Halo Reach

Then counting other games with big shooting elements like puzzle games (Portal, Geometry Wars), RPGs (Mass Effect, Fallout), TPS (Gears, Ghost Recon), Sandbox (Rockstar), Survival Horror (Dead Space) I've counted 13 more "shooters"

Yeah no doubt it would be smart for MS to create a Halo MMO, it could be MASSIVE as long as the quality was high, and honestly the Halo Universe is so huge it could certainly easily be done in terms of story but it would be a huge undertakeing and a lot of money would have to go into it.

I would love to see what MS and 343 however could do if they really put a ton of resources into a Halo MMO it could be incredible.

you forgot to combine the multiplatform games sales, the way you did the list basically biased it towords exclusive Wii games rather than actual trends in the industry. Also Wii sports given the way it was bundled doesn't really count for consumer demand for the genre.

But yes sports games probably sell more than fps that doesn't change the fact that shooters games have dominated this gen in terms of industry focus and investment as they are also the most expensive genre (outside of MMOs and sandbox both of which are less common) in terms of average production values and team sizes so it's more acurate to say shooter dominated the AAA (using the industry definition of production values, budget and advertising not metacritic) games of this gen.

RPG Decline? What!

Sure JRPG have fallen (in part due to square enix dropping the ball) this generation.

But look at the following Western RPG

Fable 2 (360) - 3.97 million
Fable 3 (360-PC) - 3.12 million
Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion (360- PS3- PC) - 5.41 million
Fallout 3 (360-PC-PS3) - 6.91 million
Fallout New Vegas - 5.14 million
Mass Effect - (360-PC) - 2.74 million
Mass Effect 2 - (360-PC-PS3) - 3.11 million
Dragon Age Origins - (360-PC-PS3) - 3.78 million
Dragon Age 2 - (PC-PS3-360) - 1.43 million

I would not call "Mass Effect 1+2" a RPG. These are shooters with minor RPG elements.

It will be interesting to see how much Xenoblade will achieve in europe.