Gaming is in a really tough spot, where it's compared with Hollywood but more in line with software development. A lot of films take less than a year to complete, and including pre and post production doesn't often take as long as two years. In games, if you take longer than two years consumers become restless. An entire team of talented people need to make sure their incredibly complex code works well, and let's face it, there isn't much software that pushes the boundaries of technology like gaming does. You need physics programmers, A.I. programmers, graphics programmers, interface designers, graphic artists of a huge variety, etc. Just look at the end credits of any game.
Meanwhile, let's look at software that doesn't even have half of the people working on it as games do. A lot of software costs $100 and up, and we ***** about games costing $60. Companies like Adobe sell software for a much higher price despite fewer people working 9-5 each day on the product.
It's a tough career, and sometimes, I do need that perspective to give developers some additional credit. It's easy to give developers a hard time for a crap game, but this is an industry that requires a huge number of talent at massive costs, and the payback is often pretty small.
Still, I do think a lot of studios need to manage their projects a bit better. Xbox Live Arcade, PSN and WiiWare allow developers a chance to make products that get noticed but also don't have to compete with the latest and greatest. I think more of the smaller studios need to focus there and try and capture what we loved about older games, but evolve them into modern technology. Shadow Complex was a fantastic mixture of old skool nostalgia and an evolution with the times, and from the sounds of it a small studio built it in less time than a full retail game. And yet the game has such polish and provided so much gameplay time for me that I enjoyed it more than most $60 retail games this year.