Again tho, I will say that 15 years ago u didn't have indie games. I don't think it's a trend at all. I think this will remain for good. Gaming is much more diverse today, imo. Yea there's the big-budget titles that are just everywhere, but even back in the early 90s, u'll find sidescroller after sidescroller, so there was trends then, too. But people were at least trying new things a lot. The benefit now, though, is that unlike the NES era where the quality of games was a gamble, some were good some weren't, u can kinda have faith nowadays that if a game is released, even the little indie games, it's gonna be good. And the little sidescrollers out on Xbox Live Arcade and all those are really done right.

So u have the benefit nowadays of diversity and experimentation, combined with real quality control that was finally fully-established more or less by the 6th generation. Even a lot of the shovelware games out can be half-way decent and enjoyable by the right crowd.

Except for Ninja Breadman on the Wii. That game is garbage, it's the worst game I've ever played that's come out in the last 15 years. Horrendous. I'm amazed this was actually released. It's like one of the early 3D platformers from the mid-90s that just swung and missed like Bubsy 3D.