SXR, what's new is the development of a new genre.
It used to be there were 'cheap' games - solitaire or other simple games - and 'premium' games - Infocom text adventures used to sell for ~$50, games from "Quake" to "Lemmings" the same.
Changes include both the development of the 'Indie' developers more, and more relevant for this thread, the type of game that has 'premium' quality but by using re-usable content can be played thousands of hours - replacing 'traditional' games.
For example, An MMO used to perhaps cost $50 plus a subscription. Now, you can play MMO's of similar quality for free, because the business model has changed to be funded by a few 'whales'.
I've read that over 90% of these MMO players don't even spend on the game. Thousands of hours of good free gaming is a hell of a competitor to a game asking for $50 for 20 hours of gameplay.
But this isn't even about the F2P model as much as that newer gaming genre of games that have thousands of hours of gameplay for low cost competing with games with expensive 'scripted' content. Which is why I used that TV analogy, an expensive per minute 'scripted' show with expensive sets and such against the very cheap 'reality tv' type programming.
Though the pressure in that example is toward the show producers, not the customers, since both are 'free' to the customer.
I mentioned new billionare owner of World of Tanks, the 40 year old in Russia; the game had almost a half billion revenue annually. League of Legends, another game like I'm describing, alone had $1.5 billion revenue - 10% of the entire gaming industry revenue. You don't see 'traditional' games with numbers like that.
If someone is putting a thousand hours in League of Legends, how much does that decrease their buying a MORE expensive title to play for 20 hours of scripted content?
It seems to me games are better than they've ever been - lots of quality, traditional type games made. But this new type of game seems a possible threat to that, just as hand-written quality RPG's are now a more low-budget market it seems.
What this would mean if it happens is likely more (and better) of that 'type' of game with long replayability and re-use of content, and fewer and lower budget 'traditional' games.
The difference even sort of pre-dates computer games - games like checkers, chess and card games had lots of 'free to play' replayability, while quality novels were purchased, consume-once entertainment competing with them.
I'd prefer the people predicting the more expensive per hour played games continue to be made are right.