Recently, The Escapist offered me the opportunity to return to the topics I'd discussed and expand on them in a way I couldn't in a 45 minute lecture. Those of you who attended the Montreal conference will find what follows familiar (though I hope there's enough new material here to keep you reading). Those of you who didn't attend the conference can judge for yourself if I'm completely off my rocker, instead of having to depend on press reports and forum posts for your facts.
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It doesn't take a genius to see that powerful new hardware is threatening to drive development costs even higher than they already are. To drive sales to levels that justify those development costs, marketing costs are skyrocketing, too. And, if you're paying any attention at all, it's hard not to notice a glut of "product," not all of it original. We're awash in licenses, sequels and "me too" games - vain attempts by publishers to increase the odds of breaking even or, dare I say it? Profiting...