I can't say I completely agree with the article as I feel he missed the point on a few things (interactive cutscenes and memory cards) but overall I agree the quality of difficulty has dwindled in the past ten years.

I do wish for a return to games offering challenge. Its not that I want them to be insanely hard like the NES days but rather I wouldn't mind seeing the game over screen a few times and having boss battles that require more than hitting X over and over again.

I feel NeoCracker is correct in that gaming is being designed more for the casual wimpy gamers instead of the more hardcore gamers. I do agree with the article in that alot of games are empowering the player far too much and destroying a true sense of achievement. Being good at DMC3 requires skill and dedication, being good at KH2 requires hitting the X button. I just wish we had balance and less making the majority of the game for people who really don't want to bother with the whole "game" aspect and make the challenging stuff some far off side quest that gets unlocked after you finish the game or towards the end when you don't care anymore.