That's an easy thing to answer. Popular titles of both *expensive 3D or CG-laden graphic games that spend lots of budget showing off graphics* and lower budget titles which concentrate on gameplay both for old-school and new-school methods. Before that, consoles were going for the big graphics race. Remember when Sony didn't even want 2D on their systems because their seal of quality meant bigger 3D or CG 3D graphics. Pressure from other consoles, which successfully embraced the 2D realm and games with lesser than million dollar budgets, forced their hand. That pressure came from the West, mind you. Including the XBLA arcade. Now everybody is trying to do that, some slower than others.
I think the biggest way some gamers got fooled, was blindly thinking that running a company like a cold hard business structure, driving game development costs way up, was a Western thing. It's something on a per-company basis. Sony brought the Big business model (which changed the game and put a hurt on Nintendo and Sega) to gaming long before Microsoft entered the picture to give them competition. Never forget that it was a Western corporation that first said, "Wait a minute. This is getting ridiculous. We need to be able to market games of all levels of monetary cost instead of this constant race to pumping more money into every game that sells."
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