I completely agree, thus my post.. Typically these types of reports turn into blamefests about piracy and those damn kids and whatnot.. In reality, the economy sucks and there just aren't that many truly decent games coming out.

I miss the days of shareware when you could try a game before buying it. Nowadays, you spend $40-$60 on a new game for your shiny console and if you hate it, you're pretty much screwed. Most places have a no exchange policy, so the only real alternative is to sell it used. GameStop will be happy to give you $10 for that $60 game you bought 5 minutes ago...

In the end, I find myself having a problem justifying buying any game I haven't directly played. So, I end up not buying any. This is probably a very good thing for my wallet, but not such a great thing for game developers. :)

Sorry to offend your sensibilities. I blame way too much network tuning and programming.

Watch.. this will turn into a big "See? Piracy is ruining the gaming business" blamefest... It's easier to blame piracy rather than crappy game design.. Of course, I'm sure the economy is playing a part as well. Although, from what I've read, people are reluctant to give up their hobbies, even in the face of a bad economy.

Even with Oracle, it's still a decent solution and works fairly well. I've had it up and running since the 0.1 release.

It has its problems, not least of which is the absolute resource hog that Oracle is, but it's better than having to log into every machine when an update comes out.