Exactly: while he makes compelling argument against an HD Wii as not being innovative enough, HE seems to be the one missing the bigger picture by focusing solely on the Wii's install base.

When a developer/publisher can essentially release an identical game on 3 platforms (Xbox360/PS3/PC) without a great deal of additional work, there needs to be a compelling case for the major expense of a Wii port. Either it's prohibitively expensive, requiring redesign from ground up (particularly in terms of art/assets which may even require an entirely new aesthetic - see Ghostbusters), or it's a shoddy port that risks dilution of the value and perceived quality of the overall brand.

I quite liked Stardock's levelheaded and vocal view on piracy (though query whether their view has changed since the launch of Demigod, when their servers were swamped by pirate users). They basically stated that developers need correctly to assess their market as people who will be paying for their games. Those are the people for whom they should be designing and, provided those people buy the game, the piracy numbers are largely irrelevant as the product will still be money-making with or without them. They are simply not part of the market.

The downside is that a market view like that is a bad sign for many hardcore gamers since that is where piracy is rife. Casual games become vastly more appealing as a market of potential paying customers, so following Stardock's advice could lead to a significant decline in hardcore games. Whether "new business practices" constitutes that kind of shift, I could not say.

Watching Kurt Cobain covering totally incongruous songs is at best ridiculous and at worst vaguely disturbing. But seeing other people’s avatars singing his songs is a non-issue – bands of all sizes perform covers all the time. Hell, most of us sing covers in the shower.

That applies to the Beatles too. I don’t want to see Lennon singing SlipKnoT, but if my band wants to cover the Beatles, why do we have to pretend to BE them? We lose culturally when we lose the ability to separate works from their creators. So by all means lock down the Beatles avatars in the game but preventing their fans enjoying their songs as DLC in Rock Band 2 serves no noble purpose.

No one else should be The Beatles. But everyone should have the right to sing their songs in the shower and (subject to licensing) anywhere else.

There's obviously an element of taste in engine quality so your view is entirely valid, but the toolset and development support from Epic has been particularly strong which is a large part of why the Unreal Engine is SO prevalent in the current generation. If anything the chief criticism against the engine has been the "samey" look of current gen games because they're all using the same tech! So Epic are hardly trying to lure people into using a substandard engine that people previously were ignoring.

This also assumes a lack of exposure to videogame consoles. A 12 year old kid brought up solely on iPhone games might well write off console gaming based on price alone if someone suddenly introduced the concept to him. However, virtually every one of those iPhone-toting kids will have experienced consoles - be it at friends' houses, or more probably with the coming generation, their parents' consoles. So they will be aware fundamentally of the difference between the two. It then becomes a question of choosing which experience they want as gamers do today.

Obviously underpricing anything risks cheapening its perceived value, even in other forms. But taken to extremes, the existence of free flash-based browser games should have destroyed any possibility of people spending money on Xbox Live Arcade titles: the perceived price-point of such games should be zero. But consumers are aware there's a difference and do place (a slightly) greater value on the downloadable console variants.

A flawed analogy as it may be: McDonald's and a high-end steak house both sell beef and as a child I ate McDonald's far more regularly than I had a seriously expensive steak. But McDonald's is only a threat to the steakhouse to the extent that I'm brought up unaware that it exists. So long as I had some exposure to both, I know what each is offering, and guess what I eat more often now?