It's not up to Sony, the publishers, or even the developers to make sure all genres on a certain platform, or even more original content, are covered or even available. They make games based on their own ideas on what they want to create and chose their associated genre accordingly.
Not to mention it's also the simple law of supply and demand - the games aren't going to come on there if there isn't a big enough audience to push a certain genre. Despite the titles you've mentioned, RTS games are one of the least popular genres on consoles so that's probably a good reason why you often seen so little of them compared to the PC platform (although Tom Clany's EndWar, MAG and Civilization are coming out on the PS3 in the very near future so they didn't entirely abandon the strategy fans).
It all goes back to what they're saying about the risk factor, if things turned out well, then a specific genre will flourish, but if they don't then that's wasted money out of their pockets and that genre will go largely abandoned save for the next developer who wants to take a crack at it. Bottom line is if the majority of the consumers had made up their mind whether they want more sequels, more original IPs or more genres, then the gaming market is largely going to shift in that direction based off of what is the popular money maker - and it doesn't matter how early or late they come out with a follow up to a previous title.
As for making sequels off of bad or average games, well remember some developers like to take a second chance at righting what was wrong with the first game they labored over - fixing and tweaking most of flaws and giving things a lot more polish. In some cases are they very successful in that attempt. Not only do they turn around and make a superior game, that sometimes introduces revolutionary new gameplay elements, but it also gives them the potential to build up a successful franchise to make money off of - which in turn can be used to finance original titles. We wouldn't be playing the highly praised Burnout Paradise, Street Fighter IV, GTA4, or Madden08 if developers decided to stop at the first crummy or average game of each.
While the PS3 has no Tetris, they do have LocoRoco, Eye of Judgement, the upcoming Last Guy, and Echochrome - the last one of which was a runaway success for them (look at all the usermade levels people have been submitting for that game). So the idea they have a weak link because they don't specifically have Tetris I find to be false. Tetris hasn't been a huge push for any gaming platform like it was for the GameBoy.
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dm404's Comments
I have to disagree with your comments here.
It's not up to Sony, the publishers, or even the developers to make sure all genres on a certain platform, or even more original content, are covered or even available. They make games based on their own ideas on what they want to create and chose their associated genre accordingly.
Not to mention it's also the simple law of supply and demand - the games aren't going to come on there if there isn't a big enough audience to push a certain genre. Despite the titles you've mentioned, RTS games are one of the least popular genres on consoles so that's probably a good reason why you often seen so little of them compared to the PC platform (although Tom Clany's EndWar, MAG and Civilization are coming out on the PS3 in the very near future so they didn't entirely abandon the strategy fans).
It all goes back to what they're saying about the risk factor, if things turned out well, then a specific genre will flourish, but if they don't then that's wasted money out of their pockets and that genre will go largely abandoned save for the next developer who wants to take a crack at it. Bottom line is if the majority of the consumers had made up their mind whether they want more sequels, more original IPs or more genres, then the gaming market is largely going to shift in that direction based off of what is the popular money maker - and it doesn't matter how early or late they come out with a follow up to a previous title.
As for making sequels off of bad or average games, well remember some developers like to take a second chance at righting what was wrong with the first game they labored over - fixing and tweaking most of flaws and giving things a lot more polish. In some cases are they very successful in that attempt. Not only do they turn around and make a superior game, that sometimes introduces revolutionary new gameplay elements, but it also gives them the potential to build up a successful franchise to make money off of - which in turn can be used to finance original titles. We wouldn't be playing the highly praised Burnout Paradise, Street Fighter IV, GTA4, or Madden08 if developers decided to stop at the first crummy or average game of each.
While the PS3 has no Tetris, they do have LocoRoco, Eye of Judgement, the upcoming Last Guy, and Echochrome - the last one of which was a runaway success for them (look at all the usermade levels people have been submitting for that game). So the idea they have a weak link because they don't specifically have Tetris I find to be false. Tetris hasn't been a huge push for any gaming platform like it was for the GameBoy.
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