I think the game industry went through to much consolidation. A lot of the games became cookie cutters of other games. I used to play a ton of Microprose games, then they were bought up by I think EA, not sure. I liked a lot of Origin games also, but they kind of lost their independence, I bought Diable 3 way back when it was first released, at the time I did not understand it was an online only game, and 7 years later I finally got a chance to play it, I ran through the single person with kicked off the server issue over a two week period, I think it took 11 minutes for all the credit crap to run through, and it was only half the fun that Diablo 2 was.
Independent game makers just do not have the reach they once had.
Yeah you're right and I have to say, after watching a documentary about the history of the Crash Bandicoot games, they really couldn't match up to the original 3's concepts of simplicity. Spyro the Dragon managed to keep it's roots from what I can tell but I'm only going off the remastered trilogy I'm playing at the moment.
You're right about these games losing their independence once they get mopped up by the bigger corps. Don't blame the small gaming companies at all actually, it's an opportunity for them but it comes at a cost hey...