Depends. Some companies have such a strong foothold on the market that they can get away with a lot. I'm mostly talking about EA and Activision-Blizzard here.

Stardock, on the other hand, the makers of Sins of a Solar Empire, are very attentive to gamer's requests and, IIRC, did not include DRM in Sins, and have made it very accesible and cheap.

Valve is also really great with this, when you set aside the complaints some people have on the TF2 class updates, Valve is pretty much churning out wicked games with no fuss, and Steam keeps acquiring new licenses to sell games on its store, which I believe is very awesome. I got Bioshock for 15 bucks on Steam, and WaW for 25. The only thing I don't like about Valve is that they're taking FOR EVAR with the HL2 eps. Which don't really have a lot of playing time. I still haven't bought L4D, but I'm thinking about it.. if they reduce the price.. because I wasn't really wowed by it.

Consumers do hold a lot of power when it comes down to paving the way games evolve. Companies that are competent and want to stay in business know better than to dish crap out to people. Marketing is an enormous part of this industry because there is no set direction in which video games are to take in the future, so developers of both software and platforms have to be strategic and knowledgeable of their strengths and weaknesses.

DRM is a balance between combating consumer wants and profitability. I'm sure that in a perfect world in which piracy wasn't an issue, developers wouldn't even consider tacking-on DRM encryption and all the others gizmos that prevent the stampede of torrents and rapidshare files from stealing their product. There's no question that DRM annoys people (see: Spore and GTA4 for PC), but in terms of our influence paving the way for video games in this aspect, not as much. The point of a company is to make money (or rather, to increase the value of its market share), so they will never just let DRM go if it comes at the expense of growth and the developer's life.

My guess is that developers will be a lot more catering to the DRM aspect once its less of an issue for them. I'm sure they're researching ways like a new type of disc or if there was a generally effect way that consumers didn't find annoying or invasive. I don't really understand that type of hardware and DRM, but I think eventually there will be something that doesn't piss people off but gets the job done.