The Escapist - I Have Seen The Future, And it is Annoying. Thanks Joker961.
This was the horror I forsaw last year, but now I can see that no matter how pessimistic and cynical I get, the games industry is always one step ahead of me. While having lots of programs running at once is a terrible prospect, it is nothing compared to the nightmare of having multiple programs all connected to a single game. This Christmas I picked up Grand Theft Auto IV through Steam (in my defense: I knew the PC version was a train wreck, but it was super, super cheap) and I got a glimpse of the coming digital delivery spamocalypse. GTA IV ran under Games for Windows Live. But I don't know why, because as far as I could tell it didn't use any GFWL features. For multiplayer, it used the Rockstar Social Club. And all of this ran under Steam. Steam, GFWL, and Rockstar Social Club all have their own unique login systems, which means the game basically wanted three sets of login credentials. (On the other hand, only the Steam one is mandatory. On the other other hand, Social Club is a hateful, pestering bastard.)

Bitmob - The Industry is Changing, and I'm Scared.
One of the worst feelings a person can have, in my personal opinion, is that of helplessness. Being completely powerless over something and seeing absolutely no way to change it. It feels awful, and because of that, I will try my hardest to avoid experiencing it as much as I can. Sometimes though, I just can not avoid it, and recently I have had to come to terms with it and accept that I am powerless over the direction the gaming industry is taking. I realized that I must really love this industry to get so worked up about it. It is completely true, I really do love it. So you can understand how hard it has been to watch something you love turn it's back on you. Some may scoff at this, but watching this industry alienate the Hardcore Gamers in favor of Casual Gamers is tearing me apart, and I need to vent on the subject. Here is my plea to the industry.

Pach-Attack on GameTrailers.com.
A video report where industry analyst Michael Pachter names the winners and losers in 2009 in the game industry, naming all the big stories he and other analysts failed to predict accurately in advance.