mockery is a form of flattery or fear. It is very easy to diss what you fear in an attempt to make yourself look and feel better about it.

Exactly

so your saying sony's world class game studios are afraid of the people who make and upload shovelware on smartphones?

why do i find that hard to believe?

Tell ya what go take a look real quick and see just how many copies of Angry Birds have sold.  Then go look at how many copies Infamous, God of War, and Killzone have sold.

Here's a hint Angry Birds has been downloaded over 50 million times.

You would be a fool if your a game developer and you didn't recognize the vastly growing trend of quick, casual, cheap games.

I think some video game developers's have lost touch in why the industry is here and alive in the first place.

Thats how you learn in most things. You get your butt handed to you.  

Currently, or maybe within the current generation which may be at a turning point, high budget titles are sustainable, provided they were a part of a franchise with proven selling power. Gears of War, Halo, Call of Duty, Assassion's Creed, etc.

This is the only reason why budgets ballooned for the big franchises.

The problem is that there have been an abundance of titles that overestimated their potential audience in terms of budgeting under the assumption that any big production project can sell well enough to recoup costs if not profit, and those projects lost money as a result. Some studios ceased operations in the worst cases.

So maybe we are about to find out what the market is for $60 console games (major release PC games are now commonly priced at $60 as well) and $30-40 portable games and whether production values on those titles is set to shrink along with budgets. Personally, I agree that there is a good deal of uncertainty.

I also think it's on the smaller studios with untested IPs or more niche IPs to be more realistic when it comes to production budgets as far as how large the potential audience is for their project. Most can't and shouldn't be spending to match top, proven IPs under the assumption that "this is just what it costs to produce games these days."

As for the publishers who are releasing lower quality games at full $60 retail price, presumably they're just trying to get whatever sales they can at full price before the inevitable and quick price reductions at retailers. Given the number of high quality games available at any given time, I'm not sure why these are still even being made unless they're still able to recoup costs or post a profit.

And while there are a lot of people railing against smartphone games and $.99 apps, the truth is there is a lot of entertainment value in many of those games both for the overall market as well as for those who probably don't see the need to buy a $60 game that they're probably only going to play through once. You have to look harder for the gems, and they are gems because they are the exception rather than the rule, but I know that I've personally played some $.99 apps more than some of the games I paid a full retail $60 for. Design can and often does trump production values when it comes to re-playability.

As for the movie analogy, plenty of production companies have gone out of business over the years due to budgets that exceeded drawing power. If it weren't for the rental and DVD/BD/DD sales, probably more would have gone out of business as many productions practically rely upon that revenue to recoup losses. That's really on the studio heads that approve such projects, or rather approve the budgets for such projects.

The thing is there is one Angry Birds and by any reasonable count anywhere between 10,000-20,000 iOS/Android games that probably haven't been downloaded even 1,000 times.

None of these games generate the kind of revenue Infamous, God of War or Killzone have, and frankly, none of them were even trying.

Even at 50 million downloads (at $.99), Angry Birds generated less revenue than any $60 retail game that sold 1 million, of which there have been many (anyone care to count them this generation, be my guest). It's not uncommon.

And before anyone tries to bring up the budget/profit point; you can stop. That's not the point here. Everyone knows Angry Birds has been one of the most profitable games released in recent memory.

So if any developer on a minimal budget can reproduce the success of Angry Birds, I think they would if they could. But like catching lighting in a bottle, it's an extremely rare occurrence.

The point here is never use one example as proof of a trend.

Angry Birds isn't shovelware. Roxio took a simple, original concept with likeable design and executed it pretty much perfectly which is why it sold as well as it did. Next to no portable app developers are capable of doing this without simply trying to copy or be derivative.

Most full priced apps whether they're $30-40 portable games or $60 retail console/PC games aren't even capable of doing this.

Let us not forget about Facebook games. Or should I more specifically mention Zynga's social media games.... flash games that are making them rich beyond what anyone ever imagined they would.

Also, I do want to point out the most of the android Angry Birds games are free, they are supported by ad revenue which actually brings in more cash flow than selling it for $.99.

Simply put, small time developers are making small games that are enjoyed by million of people who would rather spend a dollar, nothing, or $5s on ingame money than buying console games that cost $40 - $60. Cost is the factor, which is why Steam sales are so very effective for PC games. 

If my entire buisness strategy was built on selling engines for overexpensive graphical powerhouses that weren't doing too well BEFORE the Iphone games became big... i'd be worried too.

Or if i liked said games.  Really though I'm more of a fan of the 5-30 dollar games.

Free to play, ad supported and pay as you go games are an entirely different can of worms, but in the end, whatever produces enough revenue for developers to keep making games or supporting the games they have already published is viable.

Free to play and ad supported apps do bring a new level of accessibility to anyone with network access though. Additionally, while this aspect is rarely brought up, it also completely circumvents the entire issue of piracy as game sales aren't the source of revenue.

Personally, I won't bother to play anything by Zynga, even for free, but their products do cover a pretty wide demographic. Whether any of those fall into the category of those who would have been playing the next Halo, Call of Duty and just converted to Farmville "because it was cheaper" is highly debatable though.