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Whether Prestige Titles?
Via some extended commentary on GameSetWatch, a post by Greg Costikyan on the Games*Design*Art*Culture blog on the lack of 'prestige' games in the modern game industry. By 'prestige' Costikyan means titles that may not do terribly great commercially, but that attract a lot of goodwill towards the developer and publisher. From the article: "Suppose Capcom, instead of closing Clover Studios and muttering about 'disappointing sales' had trumpetted Okami's critical success, instructed its publicists to attempt to interest both game and tech media in presentations of art from this beautiful and visually stunning game, and announced their strong support for innovation and creativity in future? They might have produced greater interest in, and sales for, the game, but more importantly, could have worked to establish for Capcom what no company other than Nintendo has in the industry today--a reputation for actually caring about gameplay. Could Ubisoft not have done the same with Beyond Good and Evil? And since Ubisoft is in direct competition in most of the cities where it has studios with EA, which has a reputation for mistreating its staff and a lack of innovation, would this not also have benefited their recruiting efforts?"
Or, you know, you could actually PROMOTE those games properly. Publishers dump boatloads of money into promoting sequels like the latest Madden 200X (which is already going to sell well without any effort), but I don't recall seeing any advertising for Okami. Certainly there was nothing memorable.
Of course the standard single page ad in a magazine generally doesn't even play up a game's strengths properly. If "beautiful graphics" are touted on the box cover, I'll see four 1 inch square microscopic "screenshots". If they're trying to promote the story we get a few stale phrases like "expansive storyline". You're not getting my attention, guys. And don't get me started about eye-splitting obnoxious flash ads. Oh, you're selling a game. That's nice. Your ad doesn't even try to tell me how it's different from the other 50 blockbusters on the market. That kind of sloppy advertising works fine for your sports sequel, because people already know what they're buying, and they're lined up to buy the next installment anyway. But it makes genuinely unique games like Okami flop.
Most companies seem to be blind to the difference between a great product promoted poorly and a mediocre sequel marketed to the gills. If a good game is not selling, fire your marketers and hire new ones. And if a bad game isn't selling, THEN you fire development staff.
It seems to me that budget is the key reason why game publishers are backing off on the prestige games. Specifically, a lot of people don't seem to know how to make a lower-budget game.
The article hints at this when they mention that prestige movies tend to be lower budget, and people who work on them are expected to work for lower pay. The huge expensive special effects and highest-paid actors are saved for movies with more mass-market appeal. Meanwhile, a lot of the more, shall we say, experimental games that I see coming out of major game studios still hold tight to their expensive high-detail graphics and whatnot. This makes the games much more expensive to produce, and they effectively price themselves out of their already restricted market.
I think a key lesson that the game industry could stand to learn is that they don't have to have incredibly complex graphics and endless content in order to make a game look good and get played a lot - Katamari Damacy illustrates this point extremely well. This is another thing that sets prestige movies, which do shun the special effects and whatnot, apart from most attempts at prestiget games that I've seen. Another is that people who pay attention to these games aren't necessarily all that interested in great visuals, anyway. Paying for all of that when your target market doesn't care about it is just throwing money down a well.
"I fail to see why they won't sell well"
because the masses are morons with shitty taste. They want violence, tits, and football.