(My post was right before yours. I don't see why you needed to quote the whole thing.)
We are talking about the video game industry. I find your suggestion that such a strong trend in consoles would be totally irrelivant to gaming as a whole to be absurd regardless of which part of it we are talking about.
You yourself even made a similar argument:
I simply countered by saying that trend is not exactly new. I'm going to say this carefully since it will be hard not to have it come across as a total flame: I likely speak for more than myself when I say that I do not appreciate your tendancy to use misleading arguments to make or defend your point. To avoid a flame war I am just going to leave it at that. Take it, leave it, or whatever.

Protracted Release Dates/ Attempts at perfectionism
Buying a Game only to find you Have to Patch Before you Can Play it

I agree with you Master911.
The mediocrity of most rpg games since Planescape : Torment.

I was going to mention the constant whining of publishers regarding second hand sales, but you guys have covered that well enough already. ;)

Regarding #2 I usually don't mind too much if the patches fix most of the problems. Due to crazy DRM and again, #2, I usually wait to purchase many new games until they've seen several patches released for them.
Regarding #1, I think that is Blizzard's unofficial way of preventing #2. :P

Pretty much re-itterating what's already been said here...
But...
1. DRM
2. Products not fit for purpose (waiting for fixes, patches)
3. Being considered a pirate...
etc..

When some company makes a game we've all been waiting for and never delivers.

My definite gripe about the gaming industry is that parents always say the same sentence: "violent video games are bad for kids". You see on every media (newspapers, TV and so on) and it bores you to death, period.

I'm sorry but that gripe is with the parents and media, not with the gaming industry :) But yeah, i get your point.
Everything that annoys me about the gaming industry is pretty well summed up by the fact that we call it 'industry'.

the big devs dont care much about PC anymore since they have tens of millions of zombie on consoles that cant tie their shoes, but to operate a pc, to pirate a game, so they are making a fortune. Do i blame the console owners? No! They are kids manipulated into the new generation where beeing dumb is great, where is easy is superb, and when they will wake up in 10-50 years to the slaves they are to the system they will have a big surprise.
I remember when a game was interesting to find out while you play what u can do it in it, now the fracking player has to know almost everything in the first 5 mins, and it must have shiny bubbles, and explosion of course, great graphics, tom hanks, and a hooker.
Lately all of my good games on pc i found them after extensive research, since really good games on pc are hard to find, but most of them are made by small developers, or indie developers.
Mount and Blade
Making History Gold
Pacific Storm(bugged AI unfortunately, great concept tho)
The Guild 1 and 2 - but the devs were bankrupt by the idiots from Jo Wood (i hate this publisher)
others...
Games like the ones above get bad reviews from major sites like Game Spot and other, because even the editor are incapable to play a game anymore. If it take more then 5 min to actually understand, and actually manage to master it, it horrible.
So today we have horrible acclaimed games like Fallout 3, Oblivion, Gears of War, Left 4 Dead( that game is a scam, no matter how muh fun is, for 1-2hours), mainstream all the way, most of them are half finished. and they have 30% of the game time the older games offered you, or the immersion.
The developers now are corporations. What corporations do? They exists for profits, they dont care about you as a consumer, and they never will, that the capitalism, democracy, i really starting to hate.
The future of PCs is in the hands of small companies(with smart pr- marketing people, publishers can kill any project you have), and indie companies.
No corporation, or government, wants you to think, or to be smart, or to be able to succeed without their pass, so through games, movies ideology, good and evil, church, they control the masses, and you in the tiresome days of 8 to 12 hours from work, and the money u need for Lucy, the women, that your wife doesn't know, u don realize that you living as a slave to a system.
The idea i think is the more dumber we will be, the more easy for some people to lead us how they desire, and yes i am talking a lot about your US people(not only, we all are in the same shit), you should be an example for all of us, but now...
</conspiracy>
Grabs another beer, and goes to play Stronghold.
I m glad that there are still gamers around that love challenges, complexity, and thank god for GOG.

- Intrusive/Restrictive DRMs, in a way having DRM isn't the main problem for me, they always where there, but one DRM that prevents me to grab my old game CD in ten years means that I'll boycott the game even if it's damn good.
- EA games and it's greed madness... others have talked enough about that. Though it's more a whole society problem and it's not going to last eternally in it's current form.
- The reviewers (except a few ), how much are they paid to give good marks for each EA game ?
- The lack of truly interesting modern releases, I skip most games because none of them try to make something new or original nor it has anything that the "good old games" have. I don't bother about tactical story driven FPS with escort crap missions nor Watered RPGs without any true story or cheap strategy games which are replicate of what we've seen 10 years ago. The last truly original game I bought was Mount & Blade which is a true piece of awesomeness, I can't imagine how wonderful it could have been if it's studio had as much money as EA...
- MMOs, an easy moneymaking illusion, too much developers have wasted important resources in them and except for a few of them like WOW it has lead to nowhere but oblivion.
I think we're in a period where gaming has become a true industry out of adventurers like the movies did in the last century, it's only a matter of time before a true parallel market for "amateur/expert players" develop itself away from the mainstream. Like authors and regional films do compared to Hollywood.

1) DRM
2) Publishers blaming everything on piracy
3) Less content, more "expansions"
4) The sycophantic nature of most of the review sites (case in point, the high ratings for tech demo, "Assasins Creed")
5) The Oblivionisation of the RPG segment
6) Less gameplay innovation, less bravery to put out interesting titles

I could say a lot about various current PC games out there, but I'll instead talk about a game I myself have come to really love... Cave Story. Cave Story is a freeware PC title from one guy who calls himself Pixel. It is a 2D platformer which uses sprites in the vein of Super Metroid where you play as a robot soldier from the surface. My friends and I have found this game more enjoyable than many of the high-budget graphical lovefests and it's free. It's going to be on WiiWare sometime and I shall buy the WiiWare version because this guy, Pixel, deserves my money for making this enjoyable game.
My problem with the gaming industry is that the consoles, or at least the HD Twins, are becoming more and more complicated like PCs with DLC, DRM, and various configurations. I've been a console gamer and owned a Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, and Xbox. I disliked the Xbox the most out of them. The Xbox 360 and PS3 feel more like successors to the Xbox for my taste. This is why I only own a Wii this generation.
Now you may be asking why I am a fan of GOG if I don't like PC games. Well, I will tell you... The most I've spent per game on PC Gaming this year was $2.25 and that was because of GOG's own deal on Earthworm Jim 1 & 2 which I got for $4.50. I've have a Steam account and I've only spent $2 per game at the most on that... and that was because of the $10 Orange Box Weekend Deal, every other game I have on Steam I got for $1 each or was gifted. Quite simply, to me PC Gaming is now cheaper and easier than the Console Gaming defined by MS and Sony. As for Nintendo, in my view they are the only ones who realize the inherent difference between a PC and a Console.

Constantly whining gamers.
Seriously. I can't imagine another group who bitch as much. Or who seem to feel that they are entitled to so much. In almost 20 years of playing games i can only think of 2 or 3 i played that were BAD... yet go to any gaming site and all you get is people complaining.
A game does 90% of it's stuff great, or tries something innovative and new, or has a couple of small flaws... and all you hear about are the flaws. You see games that get solid 90% reviews... but if you read the forums or blogs you'd think they were crimes against humanity.
Every forum is full of the lets hate on (bethesda/steam/ea/nintendo/whatever) threads, and people bitch about games, hardware, drivers, software, operating systems, distribution systems, prices, and on and on and on.
It's got to the stage now where even the people who pirate the game and get it for free get pissed and start complaining if it isn't perfect or if they don't get good support. GAHHHH!
*i realise i just wrote a whole bitchy rant about people bitching... but you did ask ;-)

I'm not sure about what you're meaning...