Unfourtunately 'Microtrending' is popularized by EA on consoles, Other developers are following suit including Activision, and even 343. You're 5 years behind the curve and if you are not developing a microtrending game you're not going to stay competitive. 60 usd a game is no longer cutting it and console players want MOAR for their game experiences.

Full year of call of duty was like 120 USD give or take.

Stop making excuses for developers who do not have enough money to make their next game or to operate their studio for one more day. There are plenty of games that where never to be and sequels to great games I would love to see but the sad fact that some of the best games are the games nobody buys. You truly cannot run a business on desire alone. I would love to see an Okami sequel, Homeworld, Tie Fighter vs X-Wing and myrads of other games yet those will likely never happen as just about every studio I want a sequel from has been evaporated of every dime they don't have. I truly hate seeing Capcom trash Megaman franchise entirely but the fact is, it is a losing investment, Capcom literally blamed the fans for the company hate against the blue bomber because of the general lack of support has been dying in the generations the blue bomber has gone though. Zelda I fear is going to be the next big classic franchise we may see get killed off by its own success of earlier iterations, or the dreadnought that built Final Fantasy, these studios are 1 or 2 flops away from evaporating. There is a reason why there is a HD remake of FFX and not one of FFVII. FFVII was really ****** in retrospect and a remake is going to **** all of you off and that's a bet SE is not going to waste.

CCP has a business to run and services to provide, my hopes is that even on a low budget they can continue to develop building content that stacks and stacks and a Dust 514 II never becomes nessecary and it becomes the shooter to talk about for a decade becuase 10 years from now we may be on Halo X, CoD Future Warfare 5, CoD Civil War II, Battlefield 1812, Planet-side 3 but hopefully we will have Dust 514 still. If you feel that 60$ a year is fair which is the bare minimum cost of CoD subscription (60$+ more if you PSN or XBOX gold)

The internet is not free, model artist is not free, netcode is not free, server hardware is not free, bandwidth is not free, community managers is not free, content designers is not free, map designers is not free, project directors is not free, system designers is not free, sound engineers is not free, economist and quality assurance is not free, customer services are not free.

One awful fact you're going have to face is this, Cost of your so called AAA games are making Hollywood blush in terms of budgets. The rise of el'cheapo phone nickel and dime apps is going to be a major shift in the market failure to be on this bandwagon today will spell certain doom for many many many studios that fail to consider that platform a viable source of income.

One more note micro-transactions are here to stay. Even the venerable Minecraft has em and is going to expand on it. Notch's team don't work for free either someone has to buy their pizza and deliver it to their garage.

Another trend I guess that is showing up I would like to term Games in progress. Games have budgetary deadlines and seas-saws to meet. So when enough content is good enough for the 60$ they will ship and finish the rest of the game later as it typically is less time consuming, less man power intensive and frees up quite a bit of the team for the next major sequel.

The days of paying just 70 (nex gen) quid for a game is mostly over. I truly fear the generation after will be 100% cloud based meaning used game stores are going to be extinct very quickly.