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Not to take too much away from your commentary, which seemed otherwise dead on, but Myst is the third best selling PC game of all time. In sales, it only trails The Sims and Counter...err... Half-Life 1.

It was truly, insanely, ridiculously profitable in the way that only a very few games have managed. The mechanics did not hinder sales numbers.

Dude, you've argued yourself into a corner.

Nobody is going to give you a big budget to play around with if you're not producing something that isn't related to something tried and true...

However:

Not having to appeal to your financiers frees you to explore, and having low expenses to recoup frees you appeal to a narrow audience. If your idea works there and turns out to have broader appeal, then you have a jumping off point into the big budget arena.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

And for the money shot:

Nobody is going to give you a big budget...

And that's about the crux of it. I never said that big budgets should just be given. Let the budget developers produce games that stand out and they will get the sales and earn the cash to make the A-list games. Oh sure, there will be those that do manage to secure financial backers from the start, without proving that they can make innovative and fun games. But if games are cheaper and easier to make it will be easier for smaller game developers to earn the budgets they need for A-titles, plus big financial backing will make less difference in the quality of the output. Thus the playing field is levelled.

Now, I could take you to task for this:

The problem is that creativity doesn't guarantee, or even drive sales in big budget titles.

But i think that fallacy speaks for itself. In fact, you said it yourself:

...you need to promise that the gameplay of your game will be based on some previously successful title...

Now, where do these "previously" successful titles come from? Innovative ideas! At the very least, an innovative twist on an old theme. You are arguing that the only way a game will sell big is if it is like the competition and/or previous games. That's demonstrably crap (the top 20 games by sales here is a who's who of innovative and non-formulaic gaming for the past 20 years, with a few notable exceptions (Harry Potter???)).

Your view of how games should be made = more of the same (and explicitly so). Mine = probably more of the same, but with a far, far bigger chance for something new to come out of left field.

i think they abused it as a marketing platform for their xbox

think about how it would have hit the much bigger PC market like a bomb

PC games just don't sell that well in comparison. I think many people don't realise how small the PC game market is (compared to consoles). After a year even the hugely successful Half Life had only sold just over a million units. Over the next few years, those sales climbed to 8 million (according to this top 20 list), helped by Counter-Strike, but Half Life is an exceptional game (especially in terms of sales for a PC game). The only other PC games on that list are The Sims (at 10 million - for a PC game, that is huge) and Myst (at 7 million). I don't think Halo has as wide a market as The Sims or Myst, though. Just look at the sales for Super Mario 64 - on a console that many people still refer to as 'a failure', it sold 11 million copies.

Judging from Half Life's sales figures (although bear in mind that is after 5 years of it being on sale), Half Life 2 will probably approach Halo's sales figures, but I suspect Valve might remain tight lipped about the number of copies they sell via Steam.

In short, selling a million plus units of a game on a console is not that rare. For a PC game it's pretty rare. I'll leave you to do the maths.

I'm not trying to say the PC games market is small per se, I'm just saying that describing it as 'much bigger' is really not a factual statement.

I used to think the same, but I read an interview in which an id executive claimed it was a surprisingly small portion of their revenue. I don't have the link handy, but Google found a quote from Todd Hollenshead: "engine licensing accounts for 20% of id Software's revenue." 20% is a big piece of the pie, but it seems the games are still the moneymakers.