I believe that the success of this kind of "niche" games have raised some eyebrows and made some people in high places think "hum... pleasing niches and communities might not be so bad after all..."
Yeah I'd like to kick those people in the teeth (really just a good tongue lashing), as this is basically what happens. They get us the core, we spend big and we are loyal.
But hey look over there, that grass... it's so green, must get over there. Well there is a price for that, to get there you have to change, so they change, now they aren't as desirable to their original followers.
Then when done with their newest group, they see another patch of green grass. Each iteration they lose more and more of the original group, the group that will throw $1000's a year at the industry to ultimately find out their latest huge green pasture only likes the most fashionable games, impossible to predict success since it's fashion and they want it for as close to FREE as possible.
So what they get is this huge finicky crowd that doesn't want to spend much at all on gaming vs the in the bag hobbyists. So when devs break from the big houses, they only need the smaller hobbiest group since their costs are much lower and they get to go back to making what they love to make.
The End.
