An excerpt from a Gamasutra interview with Chris Crawford, a former game developer.

GS: What would you say to companies like Nintendo, who recently announced their Touch Generations brand for the Nintendo DS, which is meant to categorize certain games into being more accessible to everyone? Do you feel that that's a step in the right direction, or is it just pandering?

CC: I view these kinds of things with skepticism because I've seen that so many times before. Does anybody remember some years back when Sony, with great fanfare, released the chip that they called the "emotion engine" and flooded the airwaves with interviews about how they were going to break the mold and do something completely different, and it never amounted to anything? And there have been other similar attempts that never go anywhere.

GS: With Nintendo, this isn't even an attempt to create content, but more of a branding and in some cases re-branding of games to be more accessible to a general audience.

CC: Yes, this is my point. There are no new ideas here. They're just sort of reshuffling the existing set of ideas.

GS: Continuing with the Nintendo theme, do you feel that the Wii in is a step in the right direction as far as innovation? Or do you think it's going to be the same old stuff only with a fancy new controller?

CC: More likely, the latter. I'm not a fortune teller. I don't know what they'll do. But I think that it is reasonable to expect that an industry that hasn't produced any innovation in at least a decade is unlikely to change its spots.

Click here for the full interview