What reviewers/developers/enthusiasts like is not what sells games.

[LordTheNightKnight]

Veder Juda said:

LordTheNightKnight said:

Mitsurugi said:

Why don't the Publisher's just offer online surveys to each person who downloads the deomoes or purchases copies of their games? If they really wanna know what people want, why don't they just ask them? The optional and written response surveys could be offered digitally over XBL or PSN.They could ask questions, pay attension to their customers responses and needs and not waste money on features gamers don't want or enjoy.I for one would love to tell Criterion,Capcom and Namco what I don't like about their current Burnout, Resident Evil and Tekken iterations and how hey should fiix hem.

That is one good way to start. Heck, that's one thing High Voltage is getting right. They talked to people after The Conduit came out to see how they could improve the game. More developers should do that... all of them if possible.

The potential pitfall of that is that the people most likely to download demoes, or answer optional surveys are themselves core gamers, and their answers will likely reinforce the beliefs of the developers.  This causes a snowball effect where the developers make games for a specific audience, and that audience convinces them to keep making the same games for them, which leads to developers making more games for that audience, ignoring other potential audiences.

That's why I wrote "to start". They would have to go further, and, for one thing, learn that even the mainstream on the HD systems is not what they think.