Fair question about Epic. What saddens me is not the fact that they exist so much as the level of mainstream success they have achieved and the influence they have over the industry.

It is said that Epic were the ones who convinced Microsoft into doubling the amount of RAM in the 360, and now with this new tech demo for their engine it is most likely the cycle is repeating itself - Epic themselves aren't shy about calling the recent demo a "challenge" of sorts to next gen console manufacturers...

The reason this makes me sad is that they are in fact encouraging an unhealthy trend in the games business in which the same games are made over and over again with only an increasingly inflated budget to distinguish between them... That may sound cynical to you but the fact is the variance in the so called game-space made up with this line of thinking is easily dwarfed by the potential versatility games as a whole can offer. Just think about the huge spectrum of games from tetris and defender and pac man to blaster master to sim city to jumping flash and you can see that this trend is suffocating creativity.

And to make matters worse it causes an inflation of expectations by consumers across the board! Suddenly Tetris isn't good enough unless it's in HD like the other big boy games! What a load of horse sh*t! Tetris has proven to have quadruple the staying power of Unreal, if not more! But instead of encouraging developers to make crazy unproven concepts that nine times out of ten may make very little money (or fail even altogether) until that masterful stroke of genius that changes gaming forever, we are being pushed into a shiny, pixel shaded corner for the rest of time!

This is the kind of thinking that brings people to make imbecilic statements like "but there aren't any more genres left to explore... all games are either FPS, TPS, RTS, platformers, fighters or racing games"....

^^^ you said it yourself, 9 times out of ten, they will fail, why would publishers and devs risk that especially when things are getting expensive??? Who the hell has the balls to take that risk??? We can sit here and deride them all we want but we're not in their shoes, its easier to play it safe for fear of failure, most of us would do the same, im not condoning it, but it is what is is. And lets not just pick on Epic they all do. Some of your fav games is just a rehash of old, 2d Mario #6, 3D mario # 4, Sonic # whatever, Halo Breach, Killzone, Uncharted, Godz of War, Super Street Fighter Alpha Max Plus 3, you get the point

1. Which is exactly the reason why it shouldn't be getting this expensive! Imagine if instead of making one or two HD games with OMG graphics, the same amount of money would be used to make ten ps2 level games with radical, unique concepts. Out of those ten, one or two will offer something that consumers fall in love with and may even make enough money to cover the losses for the others. In addition, once you've captured that "magic new thing" you can upscale it and release a bigger budget HD port or sequel with significantly less risk since there is already a market for it. This blockbuster will surely make you a nice profit, devs wouldn't be making big HD games to begin with if they believed otherwise...

(This is in fact done behind the scenes during game development, but I don't think nearly enough resources are put behind "gameplay R&D" of this type in most companies. Those that do put significant effort behind it are famous for doing so  - Blizzard, Valve, Nintendo etc.)

2. None of those are my favorites, you can view my game collection to see a partial list. Also, I'm not saying there isn't room for iteration when exploring game concepts. But eventually you exhaust your possibility space, and if you don't break out in a new direction before that point than you are effectively stifling creativity.

It's not like the graphics race is new to this generation.  If anything now is the easiest time for people to take risks on creative games.  Development was much cheaper 20-30 years ago, but you also had to manufacture expensive cartridges and be able to distribute them across the world.  Between platforms like Steam, the app store, PSN/XBLA, XLIG, and even your own site, pretty much anyone who has an interest is able to make and distribute their own game.

Also Tetris is an odd thing to mention, considering the complete mess of its licensing in the 80's.  There were companies that didn't even have the rights to Tetris licensing it to others who then sub-licensed it to even more companies.  Plus the actual creator didn't profit off the game for more than a decade.

Speaking of Pac-man as well, the 2600 version was criticized for having much worse visuals (among other reasons) than the arcade version.  It's failure was a pretty big factor in both the destruction of Atari and the video game market overall.

Also Epic's suggestion to add more RAM was great.  256MB of RAM would have been a major bottleneck.  Hell, 512 isn't all that great either.

I have to wonder, did you feel the same way with every new generation?  What makes the current predicament any different from Blast Processing, or 3D graphics, or FMVs?

In all honesty, you could write a book on all the stupid reasons third parties didn't focus on Wii.  From their completely ignoring it for the first two years of its life to the majority of them only making the cheapest and most 'casual' games ever in a sad attempt to steal 1% of Nintendo's market.

But all that aside, the main reason third parties are ignoring Wii now is three fold.

1) Piracy: Piracy is off the charts this gen.  And Wii is the most pirated system.  And just like the DS, most people (even pirates) buy the first party Nintendo games, but only 'hack' the third party games like Muramasa, Little Kings Story, No More Heroes or Madworld.

2) Handhelds: It costs 10x less to develop a DS or PSP game, with a much larger install base and less profit loss from pirates.  The DS and PSP may be the most hacked systems, but they also have a larger profit margin for initial investment.

3) HD Consoles: While third parties probably could have made a huge splash on the Wii in its first 2-3 years, now the market is lost.  Even Wii fans are hesitant to buy third party games and are switching to the much more reliable third party titles on the PS3/360.  Heck, even I got tired of it and bought a PS3 recently.  And I'm glad I did.

Nintendo is stuck in a hole.  They can continue to dominate the market with just the profits from their first party line up.  But they'll never have the full market penetration of a PS2 or SNES if they don't appeal to third parties.  This is why I think they'll be releasing a more graphics focused console (like the GameCube) in 2012.

So, you want Nintendo to do what they did with GC and fail again? WTF?

That is because Nintendo does not publish on other systems.

The difference is, Nintendo made the GameCube to specifically try to appeal to third parties, at a time when the N64 had already pushed them away and the PS2 was destined to get 95% of al third party support.

At this time, Nintendo is virtually half the market just themselves and the Wii was by far the most successful system, even without third parties.  If they chose this time to actually appeal to this parties and make a graphically powerful system, it would work.  Unlike on the GameCube.

What's wrong with that? What you're saying is, Nintendo should go out of their way to beg 3rd parties to eat some of their pie?

I don't think Nintendo hate money that much.

3rd party will do the same to Nintendo even now with a next gen consule even if they come out with the most powerfull platform ever.  going after 3rd party is the mistake its already done and may be doing again.

Nintendo needs to expand 1st party software capacity.   Its the Company's strenght and its there bigest advantage over the 2 others.

If they want to Win this 3 way War. they need to double there 1st party output. maybe even more.

Id floore a good part of the nintendo Wii money into opening new studio's and expanding the ones already in place, and Id continue until, I could produce 1 Qualaty game per every month there is in a year.

Then id inforce high qualaty on everything any 3rd party publish on my system.