in the future we will see call of duty be put out every year like madden mark my words it will happen.

I think that's kind of already happening. Call of Duty 2 in 2005, 3 in 2006, 4 in 2007, World at War in 2008...

The PS era-type "hardcore" games were still being released though. They just seem to be coming to an end now. Hopefully a few publishers would stick to the "old" style. If not, oh well... The casual market would only get saturated with time if everyone adopts this strategy anyway.

Excuse me a minute, if I don't feel like dropping $60 to "save the industry".  I am personally getting a bit tired of Valkyria Chronicles being rolled out as something everyone has to buy to "save the industry".  It is a fine game it seems, and if you like it, more power to you.

That was a joke. I was tempting to use Yakuza but seems like few poeple love this game in NA

No Valkyria Chronicles most likely will make a profit - or has already made it - thanks to the trademark licencing. Sony probably paid a bunch of millions to Sega for the rights to make the anime, Sega also gets royalties from both Sony and the broadcasters.  The anime/game will also bring $$ in by-products, no wonder they decided to make a 300 pages artbook : it means Valkyria already has a core fanbase and will probably gather more which means more money for Sega. As for the game don't forget Sega is the developper and publisher which means they get more money on each sale and I'm betting the DLC content got (and will get) them some money too. Everthing is very intricated in VC's case it's not just a game, it's a franchise so you can't just look at the game sales to determine if it's profitable or not.

More people need to get Valkyrie Chronicles. It's such a great game. I hope it wasn't too expensive to develop and advertise

Or "nuclear winter" could stop things.

and releasing a Shen Mue sequel on the Wii seems like a no brainer too, given the specs of the system development costs won't be as high as the original. 

 Also re-release the first two games.
they could even re-relase them with added extras, such as two different online multiplayer modes for each seperate release of ShenMue 1 and ShenMue 2.  I dunno, since arcade games are being released on Wii VC, may'be change the arcade area of the game..and/or add a fighting arena in the town...may'be some fishing...bicycle racing

idk...target practice...for the gunplay in ShenMue 3...you know that Lan Di's got lot's of punks in his organization.....may'be that'll impress Nozomi, some punk rock guitar playing, from there Sega could make a Punk rock Rock Band type game that opens up like a network for indie artists....why not do a primitive ShenMue Online version for the other port...just throwing some ideas out there.  Of course purists would probably like to just have ports.

Then Shen Mue 3.  give the Yakuza team a break from that series..

The problem isn't casual vs the rest of us. It's game studio making bad games and letting their budgets get way out of control.

And as great as mario and sonic winter olympics may be, there is no way in hell id be playing a game like that. Studios focusing on casual or easy to develop games means 0 sales from me and the millions of others like me.