This was the topic of a recent reader letter in one of the gaming magazines I get, and it's something that regularly (if tangentially) gets discussed in Game Developer just about every month.

YES, video games are getting easier.

It's a balance, you see. The idea is to make video games fun and accessible for as many customers as possible without making them either frustrating or boring. Games that are difficult to play will only ever appeal to a small hardcore crowd of gamers and thus will always have small sales.

Finding that balance, that sweet spot that lies between "boring for hardcore players" and "frustratingly difficult for casual players" is the ultimate holy grail of game design. The best games find some kind of magic combination that works for everyone.

Sometimes it's selectable difficulty levels, but that's a sort of cop-out. Lately it seems like they're solving that problem more often by giving additional gameplay content that can be ignored by casual players. For instance, on the Katamari Damacy games, you can complete any given level fairly easily, but getting a great score and finding all the secret goodies on that level takes re-playing it over and over again and finding the optimum strategy. XBox "Achievements" is similar, you can finish a game without getting many of the achievements, or you can try to get them all. I like these solutions, because they have the additional benefit of giving the game more long-term replayability.