Your mistake is that thinking smartphone games aren't competing against b-games. People only have so much time to play games and now more than ever they are content just swiping their smartphone mindlessly. The big huge AAA games are holding their ground against this, but the b-games can't.

No, there are a lot of game genres that are too expensive for an indie team to easily develop, but too niche to earn blockbuster returns. The last hope for these games seems to be Kickstarter.

Out of curiosity, can anybody mention some example "B-Games?"

I have the feeling that my definition of them may be utterly incorrect.

I never said that. You said said that there's no room to be successful in the indie market, I said that there is as long as you attract the "core" gamers market (which is very niche in comparison).

So, my "handheld migration" theory sounds reasonable, at least for Japanese games. As for Western games... well, those B-Games seem to be dead.

Indie games are B games =p.

Some people are. Others of us aren't NiKKoM.

I think it's more consumers gravitate to fewer different titles now, possibly a result of online gaming becoming so big this generation?, most people get CoD or Halo or whatever for the online component, and naturally their friends then get the same game so they can play together.

You don't buy CoD if your friend has Halo and you want to play online together. Previously you'd have both bought a different game and shared them.

Add in the massive increase in game development costs for this generation over the PS2 days (which again were a huge leap over PS1 days) and even the same sales didn't cut it like they used to.

Niche games were either low budget, and so failed to sell as, well or publishers took a massive gamble on them and if they bombed on AAA budgets, dragged the entire company down with them.

Indie gaming is really just filling the void a bit, though as Kresnik says, they're generally not filling in the void of genres I love to play (arcade racers and platformers in particular have taken a pounding this gen) and are generally filling in the void created in the change in tastes in the 90s when games moved from 2D to 3D.

When "Indie" gaming is generating the revenue levels seen by the B games in their prime, maybe I'll agree more. But as it is, "Indie" games are just for the most part low budget games that can be bought much more cheaply, and so are given more of a chance.

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving this Indie boom on Vita as it's pretty nostalgic, but they're still a completely different thing to the B games that have long since vanished for the most part (the experimental games with a budget behind them, or a more specialised games).

wasn't that exactly vice versa? developers started to release their "b" games as downloadable games and stopped to release them at retail. if we would have indie games or not we would still get these games as download and at retail nowadays. but because of that indie developers get more attention because the big studios started to make more for the downloadable market where they compete iwth the indies.

I never said that. I was meaning the over saturation of indies has pushed b games out of the market, not that there's no room to be successful in the indie market.

I'd be the worst businessman in the world if I thought there's no room to be successful in the indie market, just saying ;)