Free to play is a big and coming trend, although it has yet to hit consoles in a big way, so I'm not sure it will register with most CAG's
The other big trend I see is retailers getting involved in the CAG community more and more.
Third is the psn hacking, I'm sure it affected a lot of peoples buying habits through psn/xbox live etc. I actually had a worse experience on xbox live, and it seems like a lot of other people had accounts compromised but that story seemed under reported.