Just like all the other ossified, vested-interest controlled "intellectual property" industries, games are not commercially viable anymore. It's just like big money in music and movies. No one is willing to take a risk on anything new. Any 'new' game must make millions because it costs millions to develop. So the same old same old stuff "that worked before" is constantly recycled and people are getting bored with it. So the industry is declining anyway. Meanwhile, cell phone and browser/flash games are all over the place.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl.../03/31/0015225
Game Companies Face Hard Economic Choices
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the proliferation of free or low-cost games on the Web and for phones limits how high the major game publishers can set prices, so makers are sometimes
unable to charge enough to cover the cost of producing titles. The cost of making a game for the previous generation of machines was about $10 million, not including marketing. The cost of a game for the latest consoles is over twice that — $25 million is typical, and it can be much more. Reggie Fils-Aime, chief marketing officer for Nintendo of America, says publishers of games for its Wii console need to sell one million units of a game to turn a profit, but the majority of games, analysts said, sell no more than 150,000 copies. Developers would like to raise prices to cover development costs, but Mike McGarvey, former chief executive of Eidos and now an executive with OnLive, says that consumers have been looking at console games and saying, 'This is too expensive and there are too many choices.' Since makers cannot charge enough or sell enough games to cover the cost of producing most titles, video game makers have to hope for a blockbuster. '
The model as it exists is dying,' says McGarvey."
Slashdot: The "Game Industry" model is collapsing
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