If I want spec ops, I'll take a first person game. Come on, its Warhammer 40k, reducing it to this scale is a disservice to the potential depth of the licensed universe.

A counter-argument? Evidence?
I mean, if you're saying that an argument is so foolish that it doesn't even deserve a response, you must have a preponderance of evidence to counter it. In fact, you must be swimming in evidence, so surely you can fish up a link fairly easily. Or are you just going to troll and run, not adding anything to the debate but an insult with no evidence? Don't go all anjohl on us.
Despite having far less competition in wireless coverage than ten years ago, prices are sharply lower than they were previously, offering far more service for about half the price. Bigger companies allows for more streamlining, which allows for better services for a lower cost.

Really? Maybe if you look at the early-adopter prices as a starting point. A better comparison is to look at prices in the US compared to other first-world countries where there is more competition in market for wireless and mobile providers. In this comparison US prices tend to be far higher with customers having far less options (just compare plans across the major providers- they're pretty much identical; can you say collusion?). And in my own experience over the past 5 years the wireless plans I've gone through have either stagnated or increased in price, for pretty much the exact same service. Another telling sign is to look at how the wireless providers respond when their infrastructure starts to get taxed- instead of a push to improve their infrastructure they instead typically try to impose additional limits on customer plan to try to freeze the market environment where it previously was, instead of adapting to what the market actually wants (see the recent AT&T capping of iPod and iPad data plans). In an environment with competition there's usually a few upstart companies willing to make the upfront investment to draw in customers, which forces the rest of the competition to either follow suite or suffer a loss of customers. But in an environment with just a few big players they're perfectly happy to just keep colluding and offering the same crappy service, which is what we currently see with the US wireless market.

It's also merely standard for a maturing market.

Interesting, because my wireless providers have called me up and offered me lower prices for the same service, or upped my service for free. Part of the problem with the US as compared to the RotW is that our country is so large that's it's incredibly cost-prohibitive to upgrade infrastructure across the country, as it is to build it. Services combining means that when you leave your state you can have continuity of service, and not have large fees levied upon you for using someone else's service, which sounds better to me.
Exactly.

From what I've seen your experience would be the exception, not the rule.
This often gets trotted out, but comparisons of wireless services between the US and, say, Europe, typically compare US services available in metropolitan (or otherwise high-density) areas. If you then try to talk about Bumfuck Idaho you'll often find that such services simple aren't even available. Basically at its best wireless service in the US, with its lack of competition, gives the customer less value for their money than wireless service in many parts of Europe, and the comparisons only go downhill from there.
You seem to have forgotten that roaming charges used to often be levied on a regional basis within a carrier's own network (this eventually got phased out when some providers started using the lack of roaming charges as a selling point- competition at work). Roaming charges are not something inherent to phones operating across various networks (peering agreements applied to wireless networks would remove any justification for roaming charges); rather, roaming charges are purely profit-driven. In other words, wireless providers charge for roaming simply because they can (and it makes them money). These kinds of things get done away with either when a competitor decides to break ranks and actually start competing (as with the regional roaming), or when a government decides to call out the various wireless providers on colluding (as happened in Europe a little while back for roaming between countries).

A good solution to people trading your old games rather than buying the new ones: start creating good games again.
You sell new games, people are happy about the new games, everybody wins.

This, and also reducing the budget.
With a lower budget, you can make more games and have a better chance of making a profit. Big budget games require far too many sales.

This has been my mantra for 5+ years now... game companies are trying too hard to be the new Hollywood and making it so that a million sales is a disappointment for almost any game, which is insane.
Lower the budgets, focus on quality and make games for their audience... BOOM, the money rolls in and you have a dedicated fan-base that buys your games on release or soon after, further lowering used sales.

actually Dawn of war 2 is closer to the tabletop than any other warhammer 40k game (or at least in the Dawn of war series).
in fact Space marines are intended to be a special force so that already a few squads can match a bigger army of almost any other WH40k race and this is true for Dawn of War 2. in the previous games the battles are out of proportion (compared to the tabletop).
i like both parts of the series, the only thing i miss in the second are more races, wich will probably be fixed by the next expansion.
Also talking about the THQ i must say that they are a solid publisher, not excellent but they're not the plague either and i'm looking forward to some of their games (especially the 40k ones.)

A problem common to any industry too is that it is so much easier to add overhead than subtract it. Once you become devoted to building monolithic franchises above all else, the infrastructure becomes a kind of monster eating away at profits so fast that you can't afford to let those assets idle, whether they be plant and equipment or personnel. It's kind of like homeowners becoming slaves to their mortgages. Once you're hooked on the infrastructure, you have to feed the monster before it eats you.
Even a company with money to burn doesn't want to burn it, so a big project almost inevitably encourages a focus on bigger and bigger projects in the future, just to float the bloat. You start to need to hit it big just to keep from falling behind.
Creativity, willingness to take a risk, and thinking outside the box can quickly become unnecessary luxuries when that happens. And another nimble inventive company can turn around on a dime to become just another soulless cloning machine.

Actually, I know you've said this before and I have not replied, but discs are a lot less resilient than people think. Optical media has always been plagued with LaserRot in addition to disc scratches from normal use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
I guess they call it disc rot now but it's the same principal, especially the deterioration of the glue between the layers; there's a large variability in the quality of glue used for disc pressing and just like poor, high acid paper in a book, crappy glue leads to a very high rate of disc failure.
Also, I'd tend to agree that wireless in the US has lagged behind the rest of the world. Check out the typical plans available in Japan or most of Europe, they are much cheaper feature per feature and have a lot more free stuff (unlimited SMS has been free from the get-go in Japan, for example). Also, it's very difficult, and impossible on all but one major carrier, to bring your own phone and not pay new phone subsidy prices. Also, only T-Mobile is offering price breaks to subscribers going out of contract right now (they are bleeding market share badly). Spring just raised it's prices for it's data plans for EVO by 10 bucks per month and AT&T just eliminated their unlimited data plan (best you can get is 2 gigs per month now for pretty much what unlimited cost before).
Also, almost all carriers disable features in the firmware of their locked phones. Check out the locked firmware on Droid X, google OBEX support (disabled by Verizon for years so you had to pay them 75 cents to MMS pictures over their network), try removing the default Spring apps from any of their Android phones. In addition keeping your phone between carriers is basically impossible unless you are jumping between AT&T and T-Mobile (the only major GSM networks). In Europe you can take your phone to any network simply by swapping your SIM card.

I agree with this. However, people get used to high quality. If you see average to poor graphics (even if you are a strategy fan and actually don't think that graphics is important to you) right after looking at the most graphically stunning game of the year, you get a bit dissappointed. Ten years before, your game would be a big hit, today, people would say its just another re-iteration of this mediocre idea with lousy graphics. So maybe its not so easy to cut costs, when the current standards are so high.

Four pages
big posts
didn't bother readin
will post anyway
Reselling games is like reselling cars. Ford is losing money cause you bought second hand ford.
Sony is losing money because you bought TV second hand from a poor student who is moving back to his country
Sextoy producer is losing money cause you bought blowup doll second hand from ebay.
THQ is wrong in their complaints. There is no doubt about it.

The trouble is the games industry are the only ones capable of doing something about it and so far they have been allowed to stomp all over consumers rights with EULA's that are barely legal.