I want to echo much of this comment. Many of the PS3 and Xbox 360 games seen won't be for sale until Christmas season 2009. Tal Blevens -- VP Content for IGN -- said as much about Sony's offerings on Xplay yesterday http://www.g4tv.com/xplay/features/27257/Head_to_Head_Can_E3_Survive.html . Meanwhile, of the the six games that Nintendo showed, five are to be out this holiday season with the Wii Motion Plus' debut in Spring 2009 being the only exception.

Nintendo is getting blasted by people for only mentioning some games. Microsoft seems to be getting much fewer harsh words for basically pulling its uber-duber franchise Halo from its presentation, stopping Bungie from having its presentation, making a mention later of things, and then announcing a separate event will occur.  Which is "blind loyality" I ask?

Seriously, I would have liked to have seen more from Nintendo. I want Kirby Wii (that was a franchise not mentioned by Rol in his posted but often cited as another one needed on the Wii). But Nintendo targeted the mass media with their presser -- and it worked (see http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=34798&start=0 -- no one has bothered to my respond to this post which talks about the AP Entertainment (general) article which reads like Nintendo won E3 and does not even mention FF XIII going to X360).

Announcements and games will come -- or the system will die. And Nintendo knows how to make money, so I doubt they will kill the golden goose godsend that is the Wii (before its time).

Mike from Morgantown

Are you at all familiar with the concept of unintended consequences? Like, for example, a union negotiating a contract whereby their members get to thang out in job banks (google it) and collect their full pay and benefits while doing nothing. Do you think that maybe--just maybe!--the unions that demanded such contracts in the first place are at least somewhat culpable in their own undoing? Even a moron with a sub-Econ 101 education know it's a really, really bad idea to pay someone for doing *nothing*.

Also: Sony and MS knew damn well that budgets would have to be massively expanded to make the most of the graphical and aural capabilitie of their systems--please don't sit here and attempt to revise history (again).

I could be wrong, but I suspect that a large portion of the "Rift" (real or imagined) comes from the little information people have about the long term Nintendo line-up. If Nintendo announced that Pikmin 3 and Kid Icarus were going to be released for Holiday 2008 and both games were delayed into 2009 (for some reason) I don't think that people would be talking about how Nintendo abandoned their fans ...

So, average game budgets have quadrupled, while the the price of a game has gone up from $50 to $60.  You figure it out.  Better than ever?  Revenue means little if profits aren't there.  Higher budgets, more risk... so yes, unsustainable.

I'm doubtful that the average game budget has quadrupled.  But say it has doubled plus.  If average sales of a game has double as well, with the price going up by 20%, the industry would be fine.  Now, has the average game's sales doubled since last time?  I'm doubting that as well.  So, in the final analysis, unfortunately, I'd have to say yes, unsustainable as well.

For the most part people have been stating that development on HD console (and modern PC) games is 2 to 4 times what it cost to produce a similar game in the previous generation, and at the same time we have seen a massive reduction in the ammount of content that the average game has. This is (generally) backed up by post-mortums that are released to sites like Gamasutra.com that show a noticeable increase in development team size (from, roughly,40 people in the previous generation to, often, over 100 people for HD games) and in the time it takes to develop a game (from 18 to 24 months to, often, over 36 months to produce a HD game)

Some games are selling more copies, but that comes at the same time as there are (dramatically) fewer games in most genres, and even the higher retail cost is not preventing most large publishers from recording massive losses; even the massive quantity of highly profitable DS games that these companies are selling do not recover most of their losses from HD game development.

Of course, there's no real rift, only an engineered one. Also, it doesn't mean anything for the industry, at all.
It's a simple case of the shills being hard at work, and no, this case is no exception.
It comes more under the radar, but it's still shill material.
Being an external observer, I'm also still amazed at how easily fans/fanboys are manipulated. They are very easy to mind control, you know how they'll react.

So there's no rift. Even if there was one, it's with a tiny minority. Being shill material, this article is based on nothing but lies and bullshit. It's easy to see because even though it reads that the fanboys are a vocal minority, they still say it kept Nintendo afloat in hard times, meaning it's actually millions of people. Of course, that's not true at all.
Coupled with countless other nonsense like "customers are fickle" and not loyal, like these people will flock to the other consoles if they don't like their Wii. It's more likely they will leave all gaming alone.

I saw that article as nothing other than a collection of lies set to mind control simpleton fanboys, fueling their irrational thoughts. Actually, I saw lots of bitter tears and bullshit in this article. It's a laughing stock of an article, like many others that accompany it in the astroturfing campaign.

What amazes me the most, is that people here are drinking this nonsense.
I have the exact same feeling, it sends me the exact same negative hate vibes that I felt when the Wiimote was announced and when the Wii name was announced.

LOL Vaio, do you have a job, other than looking for biased anti-Nintendo articles to post? ;)

Besides, who names their son Casey? Really. ;D

Nintendo trolls need to learn that not every game is designed for you. Nintendo have moved on, they're doing something different whether you like it or not.

This argument has been going on for years. Old school gamers would laugh at the total casual-ness of regenerating health in Halo or unlimited lives in almost every game these days. Hardcore gaming won't ever die out, even 2D gaming is seeing a resurgence recently.