Yeah Blez you write very well, you must write a lot in your job. You make some good points. Referring to the game industry possibly being a zero-sum game where development sways towards gimicky games is a reasonable concern but I think it will improve game quality in the long run.

Developers/publishers will start to compartmentalize their teams and the game industry will begin to look more like the movie industry. It's already bigger and we have ratings. We can think of Gears and Halo as the blockbuster's like Ocean's 13 or Transformer's that come around  every couple of years (or annually in the movie industry) and the new hybrid mass market games as the low-budget, high-return flics like "Knocked Up" or those Sundance flics.

guess being Cliff's brother has it's Pros and Cons.

But as some have said it seems you have a nad (or whatever the word is) for writing. Seeing as you have a disliking to the non-gamers liking the Wii due to hype relates to my dismay of people liking a lot of things that weren't 'mainstream' (bands, sleeper hits, that sorta thing). I can see how it's bothering you since all people are going for with the Wii is because of the hype and how the general games are mainly for Casual gamers (Wii Sports, Wii Play, Mario games). Hopefully though the Wii will have better titles instead of first-party games. We'll just see how the carpet rolls down the road.

Spell IHOP then say "ness"