The new marketing model these days is to release a half-assed game and sell people features that should have been default. Anyone who defends companies like EA don't come crying back to the people who opposed them when you find out you have to pay 20$ to unlock the options so you can change your resolution.
The problem is that Publishers are geared toward produceing quanity and milking their products till they run dry. The big Publishers are run by a board of directors which are just very rich investors(yes I am demonizing the rich in this case), they decide what is best for the company. So lets look at a company like Activision. They know that people like Call of Duty, so rather taking risks with the franchise that could bring changes that people don't want to they avoid modifing the formula as much as possible. So they make a game similiar to their previous succesful title which many deadbeats will buy. Then get an advertising group to get together and create a comerical with people like FPSRussia and Robert Downey Jr to get people more interested. The Board of Directors does not like to loose money, so they are going to do whatever it takes to make money. Like ignoring the consumers and fanbase, telling the developers what the to do, shutting out all creative ideas in favor of ones of making money, and bribeing websites like ign for high ratings.
So how do you beat the almighty investors? Well you can create a massive smear campaign which invovles mass amounts of letters and emails, people getting togeter to talk about how they don't like what the company has been doing. Sound difficult? Well all you really to do is simply vote with your dollar, if enough people do not buy a product like Call of Duty then the directors are going to think "Gee this is making us money, we better look other ways to capitalize". So take it a step further and boycott the company and hope they loose money to the point where they go out of buisness or to a point where they are willing to listen to the consumer. Remember consumers make or break the market and feed the investor, so spend smart and keep them in check.
