One problem might arise from the problem of the huge development costs.
Games *must sell* zu get the huge development costs back. This is a necessity !
But - this also demands for optimizing for a greater number of customers. Which means that games are partly changed towards those kinds of players who constitute the majority of all buyers.
My personal fear is, that this leads to some kind of monoculture in terms of gaming. Which is what I think I see on the PC platform right now.
Again, yeah.. I agree... I don't like it.. but I agree.
It's a shame that companies haven't realised that there is still a sizable market for HONEST RPG's and that the loss of a portion of the marketshare would be more than made up for by the reduction in production costs of a game that focused more on substance than shinies (which is where most of the horrible middleware licencing and development costs are spent.).
As for the homogonistic nature of todays gaming, blame 'Games for Windows' and the current insistance of turning the pc control scheme in to a console one, with all of the weaknesses and flaw inherent to the situation..... I mean GOOD GRIEF.. even RISEN has acomplishments, WTF???!!!?? :<
