But a game's £12 and a car's £12,000. I (and certainly casuals) would impulse buy a cheap game based on the box as at the end of the day it's only £12 but I would never impulse buy a car.

And as I've been trying to say, games are not written about in a way and place casuals can access and understand. I know nothing about cars. If I looked at a car magazine or car websites I wouldn't understand a word they were talking about. It's the same for casuals with games. Even if they do have access to a computer they still can't access information about games written in a way that they will understand. I play loads of games but I still find some reviews refering to games I've never played and therefore making points I don't understand.

Newspapers are the only places that ever talk a way complete novices can understand. Just as I would look at a newspaper's motoring section if I want to buy a car, ordinary people look at their entertainment sections for entertainment. All I'm saying is that if the industry is to capitalise on its expansion then it needs to concentrate on getting good reviews into newspapers.

Many people don't bother checking on the internet or research before they purchase then start whining about the quality of their products. It's solely their fault.

What I'm talking about is the new customers Nintendo has brought into the market who don't complain about the quality because they don't know that a game is "bad" and that "better" exists. They get bored and don't buy any more games and they're lost to the industry. The industry can avoid losing customers if their vast PR departments spend more of their time getting reviews into the mainstream media. It's not a difficult task for them and they stand to gain enormously.

I totally agreed with the "avoid Conspiracy at all costs" theory until I played Winter Sports.  Thats actually a better than decen Wii sports game.

I think they also published Panzer Tactics DS, which is my favorite DS strategy game.

 I mean, Anubis, Ninjabread Man... that stuff is total bunk.  The publisher doesn't matter though, it's the Dev's.  Conspiracy got lucky landing two good devs I guess.  The sun shines on a dogs ass.... 

so yeah, i totally got a burr in my saddle about crappy games and the fact that I liked a couple conspiracy games. I checked out their website.
http://www.conspiracygames.com/products/cec_products.html
90% total effing crap. Data Design - please stop dev'ing games.
Conspiracy - you should be ashamed for loading crap on us.

But thx for WS and PT ds. The only other non-data design dev'd game is "counter force" but I think I'll sit that one out.

I was checking out the credits on Ninjabread Man and I noticed that the game only had an 11 person design team. So I am unsure if we should praise the developers for getting a "complete" game out of so little or damn the company for not putting more $$$ into hiring more developers.

Another question is will we see that some of these games are just the building blocks for better games down the road?

NGG_RAY,

We can only hope that they are building for the future. It makes me feel a little better since it's a garage-type enterprise. On the other hand, didn't one dude make geometry wars?

As for more money, it seems that conspiracy is worth a whopping 2 million dollars. I can't find any financials for data design. So at least they aren't a big company just cheaping out. I guess, looking at it from that angle, a small staff making some initial games is kinda cool. I'm not going to PLAY any of those... But if thats how Winter Sports got to my Wii, i guess I'm cool with it.