Finally! It took them an entire generation, but they figure out that small ventures towards niche audiences are financially desirable since you minimise risk and have the potential of relatively easy success, instead of pouring millions of dollars into another generic attempt to get at the biggest game of the market.

I really hope to see more of this "expand-alone" or "AAA experiences in smaller chunks" like Blood Dragon in the future.

Even if EA's rotation system is more appealing than Activision yearly release model. It doesn't take from the fact that the FPS genre is pretty much stagnated due to a chronic case of creative sterility.

I am sorry to say it, but the genre as whole and specially the Modern Military branch of it has been held back by the extremely detrimental mentality that imitation is a better form of competition than innovation or simply creative identity.

Look at he majority of big FPSs releases of this generation, successful or otherwise: Call of Duty, Battlefield, Killzone, Haze, Medal of Honor, Crysis (2 and 3). I know I am making a generalization but is not far fetched to say that each and everyone of those franchises boils down to: "a short, tightly scripted campaign with on line class based progression multiplayer, all presented in a joyless bleak setting with a game play based around slow moving characters and an absolute dependency on aiming down sights for proper weapon use".

Blood Dragon, Half Life, Halo, Bioshock, Team Fortress, Doom, Time Splitters, Counter Strike, Quake, Bulletstorm, Far Cry and many more have shown the potential of the genre to tackle the serious and the absurd, the authentic and fictitious, the linear and non linear, the single player and multiplayer. All contributing to a rich an diverse game selection. Why insist so much on the bland and generic aspect of the genre?

It can't be coincidence that the release of the Modern Warfare 3 trailer was the same day that the West-Zampella vs Activision trial began. I really wish to see Respawn Entertainment up to speed, if those guys delivered some extremely well crafted experiences under the fear inducing mantle of Bobby Kotick, imagine what they can do with more free reign over their new IP.

While individually, each game is good on itself, I really despise this "one game yearly" policy that Activision has, it just seems that with each new instalment the upgrades, both graphically and gameplay-wise, feel so subtle, so little, simply doesn't feel as meaningful, and so, the conception of evolution for the franchise can the regarded as slow, very slow. I do believe the series should stick to one studio working on the games at 2 even 3 year developing time, the jump from CoD2 to CoD4 felt amazing, but the way the franchise is being handled, having a game with just a one year life span, and the fact that the next consist of minor upgrades, doesn't feel right for me at the time of purchase, that's why I skipped Black Ops, I will say it looks like a good game, but I didn't impress me.

There can be indeed an addiction to almost everything, even games, but what bothers me is that stupid people blame video games as the problem and that's not true, most of the sad cases we hear about video games are caused by the people's mental instabilities and other problems rather than the game themselves, video games happen to be their object of addiction, when it could have been anything else, from drugs to chocolate. Those people need help like everyone with problems or other kind of disorders, but blaming video games in an absurd news report is not going to solve a thing. It still good to limit the time we spend at playing, video games are our way of entertainment, not our way of living.