Recently with the release of SC2 we have seen a somewhat revival of the RTS genre. Sure there are still Red Alerts and such around, but they are not very popular now days.

I would say that Starcraft's success is caused by two major points;
1. An extremely powerful and well known franchise owned by an extremely powerful and well known company.
2. The game did not become more complex, it actually became simpler if anything, making it more receptive to new players.

I think point 2 will be propogated with the next two expansions, as they do not add to the 'end' of the game, they add to the actual main gameplay. Let me expand on that statement a little more;
Taking World of Warcraft as an example, every new expansion (barring Cataclysm which i will get to) adds new content to the END of the game. The most obvious way this is shown is by the increase in level cap with every expansion, but also through end game instances and loot. In order for a new player to enjoy the content, they must first complete the considerable content of the first game, so when a new expansion comes out only players who previously played will rejoin the game (WoW subscriptions drop off at a steady rate between expansions, but players return when an expansion is released. I expect these are players who enjoy PvE rather than PvP and so leave once they finish the content). With the SC2 system new players will have new content straight away. It seems with Cataclysm WoW intends to draw in new subscriptions. Whether this worked or not I do not know, but I do know that 2 more expansions are planned, and I expect they will try to gather a bit more momentum (whether for D2 or a possible WoW2 release I don't know).

So anyway back to the original topic of game life cycles. In 2000 we pretty much saw the decline of simulation games (helicopter, sim city, planes, etc). The decline was later than that in Japan. but for the most part we can say with confident that right now simulation has dropped out of the mainstream and is now niche.

What is interesting to note is the popularity of the FPS genre. The first mainstream FPS was Doom, in the 90s, followed by the first multiplayer FPS Quake in 96. 15 years later we can see FPSs dominating the consoles, with no signs of slowing down. The most interesting part of this is that FPSs have changed the least since their early days. Comparing Quake to Black Ops we can see the main difference is better graphics. And really, that is all.

It seems the modern FPS genre is entirely based on competitive play, which to me seems like the winner. Looking at old games that are still played, we can see games like Counter Strike and Starcraft 1 still being played, purely because of their competitive values.

Games where users provide the game experience inevitably stay around for longer.


Anyway, enough random rant, I'm just happy that SC2 revived the RTS genre.