I believe that each console needs it's own high-budget franchise, just for advertising purposes.

I feel there is a need for high-budget poly pushers, but it all needs to be in balance. No more than 2-3 'epic' games for a console per year. I also believe that these epic games should only really be first party, third parties don't have the resources to take several risks.

There are far too many epic games, and the market is saturated with them. lets take the PS3 and it's 'epic' games (in terms of budget) for 2007/early 2008:

Ratchet and Clank 5, Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, Killzone 2, Gran Turismo 5, Motorstorm, Heavenly Sword, LAIR, Warhawk(?), LittleBigPlanet(?)

Those games, whether you believe they're good or not, and it doesn't matter what genre they're in, mainly sell too 'gamers'. How can someone afford that many games? And that's not including the third party games (Call of Duty 4, Haze, Unreal Tournament III, Metal Gear Solid 4, Assasins Creed).

Publishers can't keep taking hits like that all year long. Although I don't think it will take long for them all to learn their lessons, once these current projects are all finished the publishers will probably go for the smaller games.

All that being said, I really do think this is an amazing season for games, both gameplay and graphics wise. We have:

BioShock
Mass Effect
Halo 3
Super Mario Galaxy
Ratchet and Clank
Uncharted
Orange Box
Call of Duty 4
Guitar Hero 3
Rock Band
Zak & Wiki
Nights
eternal Sonata
Mario and Sonic
Naruto: Rise of the Ninja

Lots of great looking games, granted they all aren't out and may not all be amazing, but this for me is the biggest event gaming lineup I've seen, and so far I've been hardly sleeping playing these games!!!

Just a side note: what I don't like about this contest of, "who can put out the best graphics" is this arbitrary notion that best graphics = photorealistic graphics. personally i'll take the graphics in mario kart over project gotham racing anyday not because project gotham racing doesn't look good but because I like the artistic style of mario kart better. There is more than one way to be beautiful and developers ought to figure that out instead of just going for the most detailed oriented art they can.

Big budget games are great... in the right developers' hands. Imagine if the huge piles of money that are typically dumped into graphics on a big budget project were instead used primarily for good design ideas/talent and original artistic styles. We'd be in gaming heaven. But as long as you've got money-focused suits calling the shots, rather than long-time gamers with fresh ideas and a generous supply of clever... we're not likely to get there too quickly.

So send me some cash!

Had every dreamcast that ever hit the shelves sold as fast as it hit those shelves, would its fate not have changed?

Those Saw movies are making money somehow hmm?

That sounds really sad. If that's true, how would they fix it?

~Cerise

Graphics sell. It's a lot easier to show a screenshot of a game than to show someone playing it (tho Nintendo's done pretty well in that regard).

While the logic seems flawed its not. While it seems like financial suicide. The reality is that epic games bring in epic levels of cash if they succeed. While the smaller budget titles might not lose much, and if they are surprise hits might generate substantial sales. They are no less speculative. You can lose money on small games in fact you can lose more money making small budget games then big budget games. Ask all the developers that make mediocre games that have gone under.

Epics and low budget games are basically too different strategies. The epics are smart bombs while budget games are carpet bombing. You have to use them appropriately. They each have their benefits and their detractors. Sure a epic game can fail miserably, but so too can five mediocre games. We just gravitate towards the high budget games that flop. We generally ignore the developers that put out garbage every six months. Who pray they will some day strike gold.

The industry needs the strategy, and competition will keep it in place. No big player wants to be out a epic in the holiday season. Meanwhile no large developer wants to neglect the flatter seasons. Each budget has its strengths. The same way during the fall, and early spring Hollywood puts out their low budget titles. While they save their big guns for the winter, and summer seasons.

What hurts the industry or more specifically particular developers is vision. This is an art form, and if your art is not up to snuff regardless of budget you will fail. Be it two shoddy epic games, or ten low budget flops. You will not succeed if you do not have that vision. You can't substitute quality for quantity, or vice versa. You can't be too dependent on either. You need to stay balanced.

A great example is network television. Where the formula evolved towards the cheaper, faster, conservative philosophy over the years. Now you can get the same programming year in and year out lest a fad forces them to make a money grab. You get a hundred sitcoms, fifty dramas, sports, and very rarely do you get anything outside of that. All well and good as long as your not looking for things like documentaries, science fiction, fantasy, or other lesser genres. Instead you get five Law and Orders, Four CSIs, Half a dozen medical dramas, and the same nuclear family sitcoms. The reason they are cheap in comparison its easier to fire out a dozen sitcoms rather then one decent science fiction series. Well the result was that while they neglected cable networks dared. The result their market share plummeted.

Honestly however most games have around a six hour play through. What matters is the comeback. Even the highly rated Mario 64 can be dashed in six hours. The length is less important then the consistency of experience, and the desire to go through that again. Sometimes the best games can be the shortest games.

Just my two cents.