Game designers trying to hard?

With many top titles coming out this year like Call of duty Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and Gears of War 3 many games try to follow in their footsteps and try and use perks and attachments and customisation to stay up to date in the gaming industry however do games really need all of this? As consumers we pay around £40 for a brand new game and if it doesn't grab us and keep us entertained we class it as a flop or a failure so when designers start to create a game they have this notion hanging around the development so it is easy for companies to conform to the latest craze however many games have proven that if you create a game in which you sacrifice all of the add-ons and flashy customisation and replace them with a great engine which means better hit detection and better functionality for example: Goldeneye is classed as the game which created Multiplayer and did this have any crazy systems? no it had the ability to choose a character and that was about it, you joined a game on LAN or split-screen and picked up guns in the game and many games use this style to this day and they have great results, However many games have used different new features and have been extremely successful a great example of this is Call of Duty 4. Call of Duty 4 introduced the concept of creating classes and unlocking guns at different ranks and this game is still going strong today. Many games use new technology however the recipe for success does not require you to because if you have a solid game that runs great then many hardcore and casual gamers will recognise this and enjoy the game rather than a game which has new technology but is still unfinished when released.