Ethics Gradient:
The lowest common denominator reminds me of some other mass produced commodity - namely cars. One manufacturer (it may have been Rover or Vauxhall) produced designs and prototypes with the aim of showing them to the public. People would write on the supplied forms what they thought of the car. Any aspect that got too much attention - good or bad - was changed to a less radical design. The idea was that anything so outré would not appeal to as many purchasers as something more compliant. Therefore that company mainly churned out identikit boring cars with only very niche markets getting anything different.
This working practice reminds me of what has happened with Deus Ex 2, happening with Thief III and the whole of EA. This dumbing down of ideas and appealing to the wide audience is something the music and film industries have been doing for a lot of years, now, in order to make as much money as possible.
This isn't to say the entire games industry will fall into a vat of bland accountancy driven soup. There are still companies that produce the original goods, whether or not we like those games(otherwise they'd be just as bad as all the rest):
Black and White, for me, was a complete disaster but it was different and it was adventurous;
Super Monkey Ball on Gamecube - again not one of my fav's but I can understand why people like it;
Knights of the old Republic - common fare on PC, but on a console! Who'd have thought a console would be home to such a large complex and "PC" title?
Call of Cthulhu - Not released yet but it is looking good.
Russell