Well, I've commented for a long time that gamers tend to act like a bunch of junkies who gripe at their dealer when he increasingly cuts their fixes with baby powder, but still buy it anyway because they want their drugs.
It's not a perfect analogy, but the problem with franchises like "Modern Warfare" is the peer pressure involved, the FPS fanboys don't want to NOT buy the game for fear that they will be the only one and left out of their online peer circle, never to fully recover. To
be honest I think the gaming industry knows this, and exploits it.
As far as content related boycotts go, I have mixed opinions on that, depending on what they happen to be. In my opinion I think it's pretty ridiculous how the game industry uses existing "brands" and franchises to promote what are pretty much entirely new products. When it comes to things as "stupid" as the character redesigns in "Devil May Cry" or what the newer "Fallout" games look like, I think that there is an overall issue there even if any of the individual cases are themselves trivial. Simply put, the whole point of a series *IS* to produce more of the game, the idea of "[name] [numerical installment number]" is to provide more of something to someone who liked earlier games in the series. Improvements and tweaks are one thing, but entire re-designs are something else entirely. If a game company wants to radically alter a specific character or game franchise, then they should instead be launching an entirely new franchise or product line, or at least a spin-off series that is clearly identified as such.
To put things into perspective, I see no real reason why if the developers think Dante is tacky they don't just develop a new franchise with a new character, rather than changing the entire character and saying "well this is Dante, he's the same guy as before, live with it" which insults the fans, and understandably upsets the people who kept a franchise going for god knows how many installments in order to justify those changes (which allegedly are to make the game "even more popular" despite the length of time it's been around). With "Fallout" my opinion is similar, in what way was "Fallout 3" like the previous games in the series? If they wanted to go there why not launch a new franchise? Of course to be fair, it DOES seem Bethesda is trying to do exactly that with "Rage", albiet after the fact. Personally I look at the old "Ultima" games and how when they wanted to go from isometric top down gaming to a first person real-time perspective they launched a spin off series called "Ultima Underworld" specifically for that reason.
At any rate, the point isn't so much to sell any of these specific issues as being some kind of earth shattering development individually, however cumulatively I think they represent a major problem with the industry. If the industry was to knock it off, and actually launch new franchises as opposed to trying to badly modify existing ones and slot off a lot of the fans, I think everyone would benefit, and that shift in attitude would contribute to seeing more innovation because it would shed the remaining chains those franchise connections put on them. As it is a lot of these radically changed franchises wind up involving the worst aspects of both a franchise, and misguided innovation.
In short, I've come to the conclusion on that issue that someone who talks about boycotting say "Devil May Cry" specifically is a bit of a moron, but someone who talks about boycotting games in general developed with the mentality that lead to that... games that are sequels in name only... is ultimatly pushing for quite a bit, but at least has a meaningful and positive goal that would benefit everyone.