Do you feel there are too many?
I was working on a game idea, however after playing the BF3 open beta, I decided against it (mainly cause a lot of my ideas were in that game).
I think they are not as great as they can be yet, but they are taking up alot of the market.
Heard what I said about fancy food vs pizza? it works for fps games as well.
I don’t think there’s been a new feature in FPS games since C&C Renegade, and that was back in 2000. 
You’d think they would get old, but a good majority of my favorite games are FPS. I don’t know what is the differences between the ones that get it right and the ones that are boring. I mean they all are the same in principle. You have a gun and you shoot things, but ones that are good have something more, even if you can’t tell what it is. I think as long as game companies keep making games with that “thing” that makes people keep coming back the genre will never go away.
That being said there’s a lot of really old and highly annoying game mechanics in FPS’s these days that just won’t got away. Four player co-op, picking up dog tags, kill streak bonus, and most of all, the regenerating health. (man there is nothing more stupid/annoying/overdone)
FPS games in the last 10 years have seen a stronger showing of RPG elements introduced and there still is much room for growth improvement
dog tags i agree wears out fast
regeneration is an excuse for keeping the player in game without breaking the immersion by making the player restart save point but shouldn’t that come with some cost to the player? and instant health / hypo’s bother me also but in what way would you change the game mechanics?
I see that Rage is using a mini-game heart De-fibilirator and if the player bites the dust again goes back to a previous save point 
I think there are FPS because they sell well and easy to make. I started a 3rd stealth game project, but since I was new to Unity and my animation scripts kept crashing, I moved to a FPS game.
Also, I REALLY like Mirror’s Edge, and how action was done from a FPS perspective. I think more games can(and have) benefit from that idea.
Examples: Dead Island, Battlefield 3.
Most FPS are enjoyable, and that’s all I want in a video game. Screw realism.
-proper pacing
-COD craziness
-satisfying gun sound - dakka dakka dakka!!
FPS games haven’t changed much since Halo 2 came out as far as I can tell. The industry trend is to add RPG elements, as seen in Fallout 3 and Borderlands. I personally hate RPG elements mixed with guns and hope its not the next big trend. Perhaps its just companies trying to grab the smaller RPG fanbase and or extend the FPS gamers horizons to RPG style games.
FPS games are a dime a dozen now and I think there is plenty of room for improvement if you want more than point and shoot. Metroid Prime is my favorite first person game and that is more adventure than FPS. I hope more games start to lean toward Metorid Prime style gameplay with a deep involving world with gadgets and exploration rather than continuing to be a super fast paced action movie. I want tactics, I want to be forced to think and I want to explore.
One thing that needs to change in FPS games is getting the damn gun off the screen. Have these developers ever fired or carried a real gun? You can’t one hand it and run around with your arm extended keeping it in front of your face. At least the newer fps games have iron sites now. That’s a good start.
It depends for me. I tend to enjoy FPS games that step outside the “soldier in camouflage” genre, ie…, Borderlands, Bioshock, Bulletstorm, Halo, etc. However, I cannot stand the whole Battlefield, COD, splinter cell garbage. I just can’t get into the army man/tactical police thing. Regardless, I can’t say I’m a raging fan of FPS games in general so it’s hard for me to justify saying there are too many or too few, as I was never really the target market for them.
I think FPS games like all games are about experiences and I think that for an example, the experience of running around in abandoned industrial complex with assault rifle has been seen so many times that even with new “features” I just can’t get excited anymore. Not saying there’s no future. But to breath life to this genre will require thinking outside of the box. With new technology I’m sure we will see amazing things especially more “living” environments and enhanced AI.
I think we are wrong all. FPS only is a camera view perspective and it has not to be always about shooting on battle fields and nothing more.
Videogames are more than mere game genres (FPS, RPG, Platformers…). The camera view mode has not to mean always the belonging to a game genre. I think in the future the game genres will be more mixed and we are not going to talk simply about FPS, RPG…like closed game genres.
Excuse my poor english…
I think people should wake up and reflect on why simple apps like Wordfeud or strange concepts like Minecraft become viral.
The market is much bigger than the typical 12-19-years old fascinated with troop placement and Bigger Guns™.
A lot of people on this planet are completely disinterested in blood-letting concepts. Just consider all the war-torn countries.
As FPS stands for First Person Shooter, then yes, I think there are really, really too many. The market is completely saturated of this same game mechanic over and over.
That’s a problem for me, as I was baffled by BF3 overall quality and wanted to reserve some playtime for it, but I know I won’t be able because I’m just drunk of FPSes 
Same goes for Rage, which deserves as much attention as BF3.
Studios should really stop re-using this same old point-and-click mechanic over again, and try a more varied gamedesign approach.
As Kinos141 wrote, Mirror’s Edge was great, and did succeed on bringing a fast paced FPS action without having to point-and-click every enemy (PC version of course, console version was unplayable with a pad).
But try to explain that to :
Overall I think it’s a pity that we had to wait for market saturation in order to have some new concepts in FPS (like RPG elements in Rage). But well…
p.s : Fighting games are also coming this way again (they already were by the 90’s, which explains the big lack of new ones from 2000 to 2009). They are also one of the most, if not the most saturable game genre since Street Fighter, mainly because their gamedesign only revolves around their interest : mechanics, not storytelling.
I don’t know, do you think there are too many action movies? I guess it depends if you enjoy action movies. You might get sick of them sometimes, but sometimes you just want to watch a great action flick. I think it’s about the same for FPS.
Which is why I personally like COD. It’s a popcorn game, not to be taken seriously(no matter what the devs say). After a hectic day of…LIFE…I don’t want to micro-mange inventory, or communicate with friends. I just want to play.
I have to disagree about playing ME with a controller; to me it’s a action game, and action games should be played with controllers, like FPS should be played with keyboard and mouse.
Personally I like the ones that are either ultra simple and straight forward but brilliant in execution (Painkiller, Doom 1 and 2, F.E.A.R. 1 and 2 and to some extend FEAR3 even though the story ruined it a little) or the ones that are more complex and detailed in development and hidden things and ways to explore (DeusEx).
Everything in between is mostly filler material for me that I like while I play it but lose interest in way to soon.
DeusEx (1, and to some extent 3) are good examples, also Portal1,2
I disliked Deus Ex 3 story - wise, especially the ending. However, I like the gameplay, even though stealthing was harder than I thought.
Anybody, played Red Orchestra 2? I only played the tut level and it was very detailed with how to use each type of gun, how to judge distance with aim sights, bullet fall. It was nice.
Personally, I think games haven’t done much interesting things for the last years. I don’t care much about FPS games myself - as I’m very into stories And unfortunately, games are often really terribly written and FPS aren’t exactly known to have great scripts.
I miss the old strategy game genre. Apart from StarCraft 2 (which is basically StarCraft with better graphics) there’s nothing out that can be taken seriously in that genre. New FPS come out every day it seems. And I skip pretty much all of them.
Games in general feel like they could be so much more then they are.
YOU ARE WRONG AND STUPID. COD SUCKS 
But on a (mature) note, I’ll just describe my FPS opinions.
This could not be more true. I stopped playing games after GameCube, the games just sort of … dropped somehow. It stopped being about the game, and more about meeting today’s graphical needs and feature “must haves”. When is the last time a Video Game sequel was more than just a number? When’s the last time an FPS didn’t have aim-down-sights or care packages? When’s the last time you had to follow the story of a CoD or BF game to play the sequel? (par exepction Portal series). but this doesn’t have to do with the FPS series directly, so I will move on.
It’s hard to say if FPS games are a fad or not…I still think they are, they’ve only become popular recently though they’ve been around for quite some years. Also, as OP says I think there is plenty of room for improvement in the genre. honestly theres not really an FPS game that has really impressed me in anyway. (Half Life 2 was good, but overrated. However I have never seen anymore amazing level design in a n FPS game). Now, if you take FPS a long way back, they were dominated by titles such as Unreal Tournament (best mutliplayer shooter ever). Quake, Doom, FEAR and others). We go from this fast paced hectic shooter to something much different today. This oldskool style is really the meat of the First person genre. Guns, gore, and speed have never really made an impact like these classics. Therefore, most First person games today are “shooting” games with guns, violence, e.t.c.
But they are also great for other types of games, like Horror - survival for instance. New elements are introduced, and the ability to see things through the eyes of the character are immensively valuable. You can be put in their shoes and experience the character’s terror.
for some reason, there has just been no innovation since then. A certain game (and I will point my finger at CoD) has introduced these basic mechanics (aim-down-sights, certain multiplayer funcionality, quickscoping, different melee style e.t…c)It’s no doubt that this series was largely sucessful. Most FPS since are really just trying to cash in on the COD Shooter craze. So now, these First person Shooters are being mass produced, with little to no new features, with little difference in it’s predecessor. Medal of Honor, a classic in my eyes, was reduced to sludge to make some pocket cash. Dont even get started when it comes to Story, and Art is practically non- existent. the only thing that attracts a Shooter fan’s eye is the realism. (before rage I’m not counting games like Bio-shock and a select few). So yeah, there you have it.
Finally, I would like to make some last points. I may start a larger thread on this later, about gameplay elements e.t.c. the FPS genre has lost much of it’s classical gameplay elements (for realism or whatever the reason). It’s all about how many times you can spin before shooting someone, or how fast you can aim… gameplay elements are lost, like classical mutliplayer, things like lava (yes lava) general hazards, random (random weapon, random spawn) anything, simple easily calculated factors that make games so fun to play.
TLDR: Can they be improved? Yes
Are they good right now? Not really
Were they good at one time, or games in general? Yes
Are they only good for shooters? No