What I'm referencing is the proclivity of vocal gamers to fail to see the forest for the trees; the egocentrism of the current generation. If you read over any web forum or comment section dealing with devs, publishers, DLC, etc., you'll find no shortage of users who jump on the anti-corporate bandwagon and cry rivers of hate towards EA et al. for being "greedy" and "trying to line their pockets" with paid DLC, exclusive content, and other paid content/services.
They're upset because they have to pay for things that, in any other software industry, you'd have to pay a huge premium for (Photoshop, anyone? How about 3D Studio Max or Pro Tools?). However, instead of being critical of the situation, they rant on about corporate greed and how they're getting the shaft while the big firms are raking in money. All the while alluding to two important points: (1) games are luxury goods and (2) demands for more complexity in games exacerbates Murphy's law.
Point (1) should be self-evident, so I won't go into detail. (2), however, seems to be somewhat of a conundrum for a lot of the outspoken. They want more content, better looking content, and they want more complexity in the way the game interacts with them. This drives up costs AND it opens the door for more bugs in the final product. Yet, they want low price points, near-perfect performance on day 1, and they want "day 1" to be exact and absolute. When they don't get it, when a dev pushes a release date back 6 months, or they stick a price tag on it, there is massive flood of noise about how X company is ripping everyone off for the sake of greed. Instead of considering the business reasons that might be behind this, they just toss it up to an evil corporate culture out to raid their bank accounts. It's unproductive and, in a lot of cases, ignorant (a favorite number to reference in related writing & comments is sales revenue, absent important figures such as net income after tax and cash flows).
Now, does this mean the devs and big corps aren't at fault for their poor performance? No. In recent years most big names have been putting out junk, as far as I'm concerned. Having purchased Diablo III on launch, I can tell you that some of the decisions corporate makes with regard to their products are absolutely insane from a consumer perspective. Online MP in Spec Ops: The Line is also a good example of half-baked ideas from corporate. But most of these things are a response to the broad market, something that completely escapes most related discussion. Paid DLC, micro-transactions and other sales mechanisms are there because they work and standard unit sales alone don't cut it anymore. If you don't agree with the practice, you don't spend your money. Companies that get the formula right (Activision/Blizzard) will do well, companies that get the formula wrong won't (Electronic Arts).
Recognizing this requires a big picture (macro) view of the situation. The most vocal gamers tend to be more "micro," considering only themselves in the equation, ignoring other important factors in the process. Hence, they're too daft to understand Cliff's point. To them, his entire article will be viewed as an exercise in corporate apologetics.