E3′s Dirty Little Secret

There's these grand assumptions again. 'Killing gaming'? Or indeed killing challenge? Not in the slightest. Yes, a mouse and keyboard is the preferable input method for certain genres, such as the FPS, RTS and very specific types of RPG. But the controller is still the optimum input method for several other genres. There's a reason Street Fighter IV players - and I think we can all agree SFIV, where the best players rely on individual frames for reaction time, is the pinnacle of required action times - use arcade sticks. Try playing that with a mouse and keyboard. They are more accurate for that given purpose, and I certainly don't think you could call SFIV an 'easy' game (the people who play little else will attest to that). Similarly, Cave shooters - with their insanely mathematical combo systems and challenging bullet patterns - are more at home on consoles and iPhones than they are with a mouse and keyboard. Try getting a good score in Akai Katana - every bit as demanding on the senses and reaction times as anything the PC has to offer. Geomotry Wars and similar twin stick shooters demand a good pad. Not to mention Dark Souls: designed from the ground up to reflect the strengths and weaknesses of a joypad. And you seem to forget that several of the hardest, most challenging games of all time - from Ghouls and Ghosts to the Megaman games - originated on retro consoles, which had even more limited reaction times (and the designers were inspired in the way they dealt with that). It's frankly a ludicrous statement to even for a second suggest that consoles and control pads by their very nature make games easier. Again, you just seem to be looking in the wrong places.

I also think challenge in itself is not the be all and end all. There needs to be a good mix. I wouldn't sacrifice the difficulty of Dark Souls, but nor would I want Journey to suddenly have a fail state. And maybe Watch_dogs is designed around tactics? Why would they make something take four or five buttons when they can do it in one or two? Not all streaming lining and efforts towards accessibility are worthy of vitriol. Only some of them

As for the 'graphics' argument proposed a few posts above. I can only wholly agree that art design will make a game look infinitely more pleasing than mere tech specs. Crysis is certainly a shiny series, but is about as artistically ambitious as the Transformers films. Meanwhile, games like Rayman Origins are El Shaddai are closer in visual tone to 2001: A Space Odyssey or Spirited Away. Yes, a generation of solely cel-shaded games would be unfortunately one-sided. But I'd still take it over a generation bland, 'realistic' shooters.