| 68soul said: ... But things are what they are: some games just don't have the appeal to be mass market games... some artistic directions and level designs don't please most gamers out there, even more when it's a very japanese-oriented art direction... And that's what i was tellin' in my first post in this thread: "niche" games will often please only 200.000 or 300.000 people... but with the very high HD dev' costs now, these "niche" games won't have the green light anymore: it's like they don't have the right to exist anymore... And then, what would be left? FPS on one side, Nintendo games on another, and sports/music games everywhere? No room for RPGS, action/adventure, platformers, puzzle games? No originality, no new gameplay, no new controls, no new IPs, and sequels of famous franchises only, in a very risk-averse industry? This would be the day i'd quit gaming, then...
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It's probably just a transition phase where the costs for the upper tier have balooned but the whole press/retail/distribution system has not adjusted or found an equilibrium between the different tiers. You can still produce games on the HD consoles and PC with $3-5M and aiming at 200-300K sales, but then it's very hard to enter a market saturated with huge projects. Look at the japanese market for JRPGs and you'll see lots of smaller projects still being born on the PS3, because their specialized market is not that oppressive.
Just like there are theaters specialized in cinema d'essai, and you don't pit a niche movie and a summer blockbuster directly, so the smaller games will have to find alternative ways to be distributed and promoted. I'm frankly not that worried: projects for which the authors are strongly motivated will endure the financial distress more than bombastic run-of-the-mill moneymakers. Plus, we're going towards pervasive low-cost network distribution and things like the "japan import" channel we heard about in the SEGA-Sony meeting, Steam, etc. would likely be able to save the day even if retailers and mainstream press are slow to adapt.
