I have mixed opinions. There's a lot of companies that need to get their act together. And there's a lot of companies who have done wonderous things. Unfortunately, the wonder is rarely rewarded. So like Yearg said, the demographic is often just as much to blame as the the companies. The companies make bad decisions, people pay them. The companies make great decisions and nobody's interested. People are just as much to blame for the industry's short-comings. And I've really no clue what the heck is going on in Japan, that a lot of developers won't let go of the cliches they've developed. Rehashed stories must sell exceedingly well over there, I guess they're a huge fan of comfort zones. Though fortunately in the last few years a few developers have tried to branch out. Clover was a good one. And then they got closed and re-absorbed. So its pretty obvious what the general public thought of them (sadly). Pretty ridiculous all around. I'm just glad there's still some diamonds in the rough, by some miracle. The fact that we're getting a re-release of Beyond Good and Evil, and a sequel astounds and delights me. By all rights they should have let that series die. I wouldn't blame them. But I'm so glad they didn't

In short, developers might be dumb. But in a lot of respects, so are gamers

And I think I'm with Flying Arrow. I don't necessarily agree, but I've been a huge advocate of companies not needing to waste time trying to create bleeding edge technology, and perfectly emoting human expression is one agenda they're wasting WAY too much money on. Sure it's come a long way. But if they'd went with something stylish and passable and perfected that instead, they'd have done it a lot faster, and saved a lot more money. And could have spent that money and creativity on things like story and user-interface innovations. Sad really