I'm genuinely upset at the lack of vision from some people here.
First and foremost, everyone talking about games needs to shut up and actually read the article
Now with that out of the way let me share a little background, I make hardware for a living. I design it from concept to retail, either my own designs from scratch or someone elses ive been paid to make.
In this industry R&D only goes so far, the real hurdle is not the product, its the clueless section head, CEO or assessor who makes the final call on if a product is going to see more, or ANY development funding and even then there is no garuntee that the company will sign off on the product unless theres a clear path from production to sales.
Let me give you an example here.
A company makes some third party lightning cables for iPhone, adds in a cool little feature of weather protection when not in use.
Head of business development for that company approaches a major retailer, major retailer is less interested in the design and features and more interested in the profit margins for a 10k PO.
In this situation, the "cool features" get sidelined and a cheaper version gets produced, priced so that the retailer makes money and the manufacturer makes money, and with any luck will cover the cost to make the thing to begin with, but the end result is the customer ends up with a lower end product missing features it originally had and why? because the retailer wont take the risk on a lower profit margin so in turn the head of business development wont invest the extra money in to the better design.
So many times I have seen amazing products get butchered into mediocre products because retailers wont take a risk on an unproven idea unless the manufacturing company is willing to give an assurance (a guranteed return on their investment even if the product does not sell), unless the manufacturing company is absolutely certain they generally shy away from doing this.
This isnt even limited to just tiny companies either, it goes all the way up the chain and unless you have a strong enough brand that has a degree of assurance that a product will sell regardless (eg, Apple) it never plays out smoothly.
Then theres employees of a company that will come up with a great idea, and R&D staff will think, hey that is pretty awesome, so they put together a presentation on the idea and present it to the head honchos, 80% of the time the head honchos, who are generally clueless businessmen, will turn it down unless its tried and tested.
As such, companies over the years come up with hundreds, even thousands of awesome product ideas which either never make it further than the initial presentation or get as far as an early prototype then get ditched, in favor of tried and tested retail performers.
This leads to a market flooded with clones, copies and unoriginality.
Crowdsourcing product concepts TAKES AWAY MUCH OF THE POWER FOR THE COMPANY TO SAY NO, if a crowdsourced project does extremely well, the CEOs and clueless suits have little reason to turn it down, and we end up with more innovative and unique products.
At the same time, because the product is being crowdsourced, development can be steered by the contributors, features that people actually want end up high on priority lists and we don't end up with pointless crap like the Aibo or Rolly.
Frankly, I think the industry NEEDS crowdsourcing in its development sector, regardless of how small or how large the company attached to it is, I hope MORE companies take this route and take away the descision making from the head honchos and businessmen and puts it squarly in the hands of the people who ultimately are the ones that will be buying the resulting products.
It isnt an exact science of course, and over time a few lemons are going to reach market on the backs of crowdfunding, but at the very least those lemons will have had a chance, along with potential gems, rather than dissapearing into obscurity like thousands upon thousands of product designs which end users would have bent over backwards to own, usually do.
So take that into consideration before jumping on the "ew large companies dont need crowdsourcing money" bandwagon, because doing that ensures that companies continue to push out products that never quite hit the mark and always leave you thinking "its nice but i wish it had x feature or x design, or z color option".
Understand this simple fact, crowdsourcing product development puts YOU in control of the products YOU want to buy.
