In a business where only a few select players make any money, and where a major shift towards casual entertainment has taken place - the current financial climate can only help to fuel a harsh and furious reality check in 2009. Late in 2008 we saw the decline of two big independent developers - Factor 5 and Free Radical Design - both largely unsuccessful in their first attempt on current generation consoles - Lair (PS3) and Haze (PS3). The transition period from one generation to the next always has a tendency to take out those who fail to come to terms with the new hardware. This has also been one of the major reasons for the massive number of studios opting to go with Unreal Engine 3.0 - it's a far safer proposition than developing your own technology from the ground up.
Most developers want to make huge scale productions on costly cutting edge formats, but very few of these projects end up making their publishers any money these days. A lot of mid size publishers are waking up to this reality. A few years ago I applauded Midway's efforts to conquer the new consoles with a slew of new games. They all failed to meet expectations and the death of the publisher is imminent. Even giants like EA who have a great line up of bankable IP's including their EA Sports line up, The Sims, Battlefront and up until recently the Need for Speed series - feel the heat of what relying too heavily on huge productions on PS3 and Xbox 360 cost them.
It should now be obvious to everyone that the Wii is not only catering to a new audience and the Nintendo loyalists. It is also taking over the Playstation 2's role as the mainstream console this generation and developers and publishers need to adapt to this fact.Looking at the Wii portfolio to date it's a far cry from what the PS2 boasted at the same time last generation. Sure, Nintendo will dominate on Wii. But third parties could do a lot more to take advantage of a huge installed base hungry for entertainment. There is probably more than a few independent developers out there who would be well advised to swallow their pride and start coming up with original ideas for Wii instead of trying to conquer the world with another huge PS3/360 project. The irony is that this is just what Factor 5 attempted after Lair crashed and ended their second party relationship with Sony. But they ran into troubles as Brash Entertainment folded, and well, there are always many reasons when these things happen.
High Voltage Software saw an opportunity with The Conduit. Catering to a crowd that has been overlooked (Wii players who would like a good original shooter), it managed to turn heads despite looking like an average Xbox shooter, with some not so original ideas for the story and from early impressions are rather lacklustre AI. The Conduit did however land them a deal with Sega - and it has the potential to become a franchise now.
Other developers such as The Collective had to abandon their own original ideas (in this case Harker), to go for working on someone else's property (Silent Hill: Homecoming). It happens all the time, but as publishers will be even harder to lure, we will see more of this. Only the elite of independent developers will be able to land publishing deals for original projects. The rest will have to adapt. It is inevitable, the laws of the market have spoken - and this new year will be a year others following in the foot steps of Factor 5 and Free Radical Design. Hopefully the breakdown of large independent developers like them will give rise to many smaller developers focusing on original content for less risky platforms such as Wii, Xbox Live Arcade, and perhaps the iPhone. The PC is also an underestimated platform by many, and as Steam and digital distribution grows stronger it will be an even more viable option.
Don't get me wrong, I love big budget console titles, but it is unreasonable that the industry spends most of their money on one thing, and makes most of the money on something else. It's not healthy, and I think that is what we are slowly starting to realise...