This is what happens when people buy shovelware.

[Sky Render]

famousringo said:

Sky Render said:
Why does this surprise people, anyway? I mean, one of the most prominent names in shovelware on the NES was Square. The company was so notorious for poorly made games that they almost shut their doors in the late 80s and named what was to be their last game in recognition of this fact: Final Fantasy.

I'd be far more worried about the companies today that are NOT changing, to be honest. What's more disconcerting: a company noted for bad games putting out a good game, or a company noted for good games releasing what amounts to variations of the same game over and over again?

It should be obvious that anybody who invests in some shoddy games and makes a tidy profit will turn around and invest that larger sack of money in new, bigger projects. And while the pockets get deeper, the programmers and designers will naturally become more experienced, leading to better and better products.

But it's still cool to see it in action like this. Especially when so many people take the attitude that a developer/publisher is either top-tier or a waste of everybody's time.

 I remember a time when that attitude was rampant in the PC gaming scene.  If you weren't a big-name developer like Sierra or Mindscape, you were seen as not being worth anything and would surely never make it big.  Long-time PC gamers scoffed at that pathetic "shareware" crap flooding the BBSes, and knew that there was no way that Apogee or Id Software would ever get big.  And if you were a developer for the NES?  Well you've already failed then, since you were making shovelware just by virtue of making games for the NES!  ...Yeah, PC gamers could be real dicks back in the day.  Fortunately, I was all of 8 or 9 when this anti-fun mentality was polluting the PC gaming industry, and wasn't privvy to any of it until years later when browsing Usenet discussions and old PC gaming magazines of the time.