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"Maybe it's us who see the value in the latest gaming products and will happily spend money on them will keep this industry healthy and alive."

Perceived value and actual value differ.People happily spend money on things, but that doesn't mean it's culturally beneficial or that in the long run it is the right way to keep the industry afloat. As a matter of fact, it's the exact mindset that will be the doom of it all.

People are being lead to believe that if they dont support publishers like EA or Activision, that the industry will collapse upon itself and everything goes south. If EA fell apart today and Activision tomorrow, what would happen? Someone would replace them, that's what. That's the nature of business. If a company can't stay afloat on its own merits id doesnt deserve to be in business. What we see happening is this flood of cheap products and bite sized games released in high frequency... it defines "quick buck." And you'll happily allow quality to suffer for it. You do realize that's the self-destructive behavioral pattern of an addict, right?

Look at CoD. MW3 will sell millions despite the small incremental changes from each release. It's becuase people have been conditioned to settle and think that without supporting big publishers, the industry is doomed. The proof sitting counter this concept is right in front of us - on our phones, tablets, Steam, Desura... etc...

You've a right to buy what you want, but I won't have sympathy for you when in 5 years you're upset that things fell apart, became too expensive through contrived multi-platform subscriptions and add-ons.. because you're wallet and previous mindset let that dorr get kicked right the "F" in."

I agree (and as stated) have said almost the very same points, save justifying anything. The biggest impact to rising cost is the DLC. As you point out, various editions of a game are released at a higher price point with additional content. the problem is that most of the content given out isn't "additional" - it's already on the disc. As a "gift" for pre-ordering, consumers are given codes to unlock and access what is already on the physical media (MvC3 for example). Other times, DLC serves to complete the story or add the missing depth to the existing content (L.A. Noire was rather flat without the add-on launch DLC).

Now we get publishers like Activision rebranding their DLC with subtexts like "Elite Edition" which promises a year of online play. This might be okay if MW3 actually sees a year of online support from players. If we look at MW2 we can say that it has had well over a year of online support from gamers, but much of that is becuase gamers were disappointed with the Black Ops online experience. In doing the Elite Edition with the online pre-paid service subscription, we now get to deal with yet another contrived method a publisher attempts to secure place in the online gaming wars. To me, that kind of plan seems a little dishonest - it places gamers in a position where they have to think about their investment; do they move on to another game like CoD7 wherein there will likely be a similar setup, or do they maintain loyalty to MW3? For some, that could be a tough call unles all franchise titles are integrated through the system. Would they be? I doubt it, based on the method of EA and their "Online Pass" stacked under "Season Pass,"  but looking at Ubisoft's UPlay, it might be. Activision is more of a renovator than innovator anyway so it really is difficult to predict. In either case, whatever happens will be to the benefit of a corporation and detriment of a culture.

Conversely, looking at Black Ops again, ther are 5 map packs at $15 each - a common argument for the lack of campaign continuity and quality is that the game puts focus on the multiplaer and online aspects. $60 for a crap campaign with a disjointed and generic story, but fairly solid multiplayer. If we also consider that map packs allegedly add completion to the experience, another $60 in map packs for the "total experience" makes Black Ops $120 and supplies a rather shady argument to say it "increased in value." total BS, but I've heard attempts at that argument.

Like you, my biggest complaint is removal of control. Years ago I worked at Mongomery Wards, a large department store. As gaming became popular, department stores slowly latched on to games as a way to attract sales. People usually didn't so to Sears or Macy's to get games and are only now really starting to go to Wal-Mart and Target. Anyway, Castlevania: SOTN was reduced to 49 cents (CENTS!) because the store was closing. These were the regular first edition PSN discs. I bought all 4 copies the store had. I played one, and kept the other 3 wrapped in the original celophane in storage. Two years ago I sold one copy of SOTN on ebay for $120 (I didn't set that price, I set it at $15 and the bidding war went crazy). I can't do that with games today, nor will I be able to really "collect" them in the same sense as even 5 years ago. With the dispersal of physical media and a shift to digital - there's no "real" incentive to pre-order, no incentive to get special editions, and really no incentive to have loyalty to anyone. It all seems counter-productive long term, which indicates more clearly to me that the core culture is dead. And we did it to ourselves. The time to do something was years ago but our fear of losing gaming as a society killed it.

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In contrast, I think that any developer, little or otherwise, is making a bad move if they develop for a single facet of anything in the world today, expecially in gaming. Gamers aren't dissimilar from any other consumer group in that they don't know what they want until they don't have it."

>>>>I think using flat/underdeveloped characters in gaming is encouraged by both developers and players, since for most games experience comes before story telling. Mario could have a backstory on par with Citizen Kane, but I'm not going to care if the gameplay is garbage or Nintendo tries to force the story on the player.

Fair enough, platformer characters are about zany design, mechanic, and general fun of a title. Ratchet and Clank, Super Adventure Island, Sonic, et. al., people really don't care who they are - so I have to ask, why do they try desperately to develop a backstory is flat charactes are encouraged? Sonic is specifically bad about this... He's flat, but the fact they try to give him dimension takes my ability to accept his flatness. It says he's not supposed ot be.

Honestly, I have not read the Novemeber issue of EGM. I wrote this originally 6 months ago.

I'm not a huge fan of the metroid series but I've played all entries in the franchise. Since you ask, I don't have a feeling - I havent considered it too much. However, if I were to consider it I think that Samus is two people - Other M and pre-Other M. The original Samus was flat, but her roots are in the 8bit era where very little development occurs outside of RPG (and even then, it was either over or under developed). As the series progressed, they didn't play with her too much in terms of 'personality', but when Other M appeared, for the little bit I played it, I felt that I was suppoed to care about her as a person or that there was all this information and understanding of her that I should already have based on presentation. It expected a bit too much from me in terms of "who" and primarily "what", Samus is. I walked away from Other M sort of feeling that it was, in a way, a sort of soft-reboot in the wrong place at the right time. But again, my experiences with Metroid are limited given that I'm not drawn to that series."