Gaming concepts

[BumblebeeCody]

I think you kind of have to face the fact that, even outside of games, trying to create something new is almost impossible now. You can only expand on what's been made. You can see that in a chain of games.
Doom is an FPS > RE4 took it in a new direction with Third Person > Gears of War took RE4 in a new direction and added the best cover based system and so on.

Having a new IP or game concept isn't the best solution. Whether gamers like it not, CoD is a good game because they managed to find the sweet spot for FPS of this generation. In the same way we all loved Goldeneye but those mechanics have been improved upon with CoD and it's arcade style shooting. There isn't any reason to take CoD into a new direction when the formula is so strong. The same can be said for the Zelda series and the open adventure/exploration. They may add new features and little touches to the game but the core gameplay and fundamentals need to be the same.

That's not to say developers shouldn't try and explore. A lot of developers nowadays end up being a generic FPS because they want to sell. Games like Timeshift, Syndicate, Singularity, Fallout 3(debatable), The upcoming X-com all are new; or revived series, that straight away went into the FPS genre this generation.

Indeed there are is a flood of FPS game but that's because that's how generations go.
NES/SNES era - Side scrolling platformers (Mario, Megaman etc)
N64 - Collectathons (DK 64, Gex etc)
Gamecube - Action Adventure (God of War, Mario Sunshine)
Xbox - FPS
But to make that your(not yours, those people) number one complaint is pretty pathetic. They clearly aren't playing some of the most interesting games of this generation and probably think Skyrim is the best game ever. I doubt those people even play fighting games, SHMUPS(Bullet hell shooters), digital TCG, puzzle adventure etc. There's far to many genres to even complain about there being little to no new game concepts. Those people generally don't explore what they have available to them and bitch about CoD.

I believe the all genres have been explored, some, not to their fullest but I've found a crap ton of games that have brought out new concepts or changed that genre to bring something new to the table, you just have to look.....though it's not really that hard.