I've been talking about this for years, and it's one of the many reasons I am so hardcore of my criticisms of the gaming industry. The fact that it controls gaming journalists so heavily means that there is very little to keep it in line and warn customers about products before a game has been released. This ensures that buying games, at least to begin with, is almost a complete leap of faith on the part of the purchusers.
I understand the logic here of course, the publishers are spending millions on these products, and if a turd is created they still want to sell that turd to unsuspecting customers, even to the point of employing misinformation and outright lies when simple infomration control won't work. They figure that the initial leap of faith purchuses will at least help them mitigate their losses.
The issue of consumer advocacy, and simply forcing disclosure from private companies, has been a big one accross a lot of differant products. To be honest I think there needs to be laws forcing more corperate disclosure before a product is released. Not to mention things like preventing specialty journalists or their employers from accepting money through advertising contracts and the like from the same people they are supposed to report on.
Saying it, and actually seeing change are differant things entirely though.
That said, I think Resident Evil as a series has been a victim of the same "casual gamer" phenomena that has been hurting pretty much every series and genere. On paper easy action games with fancy graphics are what the lowest human denominator, which also happens to be the most profitable on paper, want. Thus every series is morphed into one of those by the corperate overlords calling the shots, whether it works for the series/genere or not. As a result we see games like "Dragon Age" turned into customizable brawlers, and "survivial horror" turned into generic third person shooters that have more to do with twitch reflexs than you know... surviving or horror.
The odd thing is that the corperate process has lead to more failures than successes, for every one that hits, we seem to see a lot of relative flops. I think the gaming industry fails to realize that the big successes to begin with came from loyal, niche audiences, and a lot of those games that don't click with the everyman are still selling today. "Dragon Age: Origins" succeeded and birthed a franchise by basically being a new "Baldur's Gate" with current technology, Baldur's Gate being a series that still sells (and makes money) and is played today despite being antiquidated. Things like "Resident Evil" seem to have been becoming more mockworthy and poorly received with each chapter, simple brand loyalty and memories of the beginnings of the series being what has carried it so far. Truthfully I'm both looking forward to, and dreading, the release of Resident Evil 6. I am hoping that it will be a well-telegraphed commercial, as well as critical failure, as the name and disappointment from previous games finally catches up with it. That might send a much needed message, alas in the process it makes it unlikely we'll ever see the team go back to the basics and make a GOOD survival horror game again.
That said I've always kind of hoped after everything we might see some massive firings and a number of twists of fate that see the original "Team Silent" and Resident Evil teams get together to launch a new collaberative franchise unconnected to either that gets back to survival horror, as survivial horror... but I doubt it will ever happen.
