Companies need to realize that games are a niche interest

In my post about adventure games I concluded by talking about how adventure games should attempt to reinvent themselves in order to appeal more broadly.  Looking back I feel kind of silly, given that this is a negative direction I think the industry is taking.  I understand that attempting to make a single game appeal to as large a crowd as possible makes sense from a business standpoint, but those who haven't been to interested in games for a long time have to realize that games themselves are a niche interest.

Which is a shame because not everybody is patient enough to get context for this scene.

So many recent games like Dead Space have been claimed to be able to appeal to a broader audience.  What this means is that Dead Space changed from a survival horror game to a game with an emphasis on combat rather than horror.  As a result the horror genre is feeling severely undercut.  About the only "Triple A" horror games that have come out recently are Silent Hill: Downpour and Resident Evil 6, the former of which trips over the horror aspect of the genre and the latter having long since cast its bet in with action and shooting rather than legitimate horror.

By watering down these genres and muddling them together, you get problems like Assassin's Creed 3 had, that there really is no core gameplay mechanic for the game to focus on.  If your game can't focus on doing one thing really well then it's going to bland, forgettable, and probably really bad.

Yet more and more Triple A games seem to be doing this.  I won't lump all of them together, but the bulk of them seem top be designed to appeal to everybody with thinly spread mechanics from across the spectrum of genres.  Games and movies have never been closer together; churn out a game that will be bought on brand recognition and people will be guaranteed to buy it while going down a checklist of stuff that needs to appear in everything or else it won't appeal to a broad audience, with absurdly large budgets to boot.  The recent Bioshock Infinite clocked in at an indefinite amount estimated to be more than $100,000,000 but less than $200,000000 according to developers.  Bioshock Infinite is incredibly solid from nearly every source I've questioned, so hopefully change is in the winds.

Games are looking better than ever, but how much money is being spent on just looks nowadays?

It's cool that companies want to appeal to a larger audience, but they should do it by making games that fit into specific niches rather than blending elements of the genres together.  It seems like the only companies willing to take risks and throw their lot in with a definite audience in mind are the ones that make indie games.  Machinarium - in my opinion the king of video games - had an incredibly modest budget, with only $1000 spent on marketing.  The game was sold at very reasonable prices on distribution platforms like Steam and PSN which allowed the company to turn a profit.  Indie games have a much more sustainable business model in the current industry, which has seen the loss of prolific studios like THQ and LucasArts.

THQ is known for game series such as Saints Row, Red Faction, and Dawn of War.

The point I'm trying to make is this; Indie games with lesser budgets don't need excessive sales to turn a profit, and by focusing tightly on a specific genre, indie games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent can capture all of a niche audience.  At the moments big name games are incorporating elements from lots of genres to appeal to as many people as possible, but more often than not it comes off as spreading everything too thinly to really grab hold of any audience.  As a result, sales decline, which is affecting the industry negatively by forcing budget cuts and bankruptcy of competent studios.  Something's gotta give.  I agree with the current forecast for the industry: a crash.

Image Sources 
http://gaming.thedigitalfix.com/

thekoalition.com
www.wikipedia.org

Further Reading
Bioshock Infinte's budget estimates and general information on game budgets
Goodbye, LucasArts.