Bulgy realistic look?What do you mean?
Anyways welcome to the forums Dragoon Lover 
I agree. Thereâs a difference between great RPGs and popular RPGs. However, popular RPGs like Final Fantasy are not necessarily great, nor do great RPGs always rise to the heights of popularity where they belong.
The games industry is full of people who cannot appreciate the finer things in life.
Youâre right Duke. Or why is it that EA sells so much of crap like Fifa, which is nearly the same game every year. And people still keep buying them.
It seems that in this non-innovative game-world thereâs no place for PDS 
I think everyone in this thread needs to take Business 101. If a product doesnât make money it isnât sequel worthy. Ignore quality, amount of time spent making it, the devotion of the fan clubs, if you want to run a succesful business expanding on a world few people care about is a big waste of money.
One of the reasons the games industry is in such a state is the fact many developers/publishers have little to no creative integrity.
Developers like Camelot, Capcom and even Sega at one time love making games. When people treat the games industry as nothing but a business where games are molded around trends and fads, then the influx of new ideas is reduced to a trickle.
The game business is not like the music/movie industries. If people donât receive good and creative games regularly they will eventually simply stop buying games. It happened before and it can happen again.
Now with the huge game companies getting bigger and bigger, their need to not put the investors money at risk are making the chances to get some inovation thinner.
Hang on SegaTecToy isnt that a contradiction? If a lot of people buy a game that means they must like it - why would people buy a crap game just for the sake of it?
I think the problem people have with rationalising why good games dont sell and crappy ones fly off the shelves is because we are evaluating the games differently to the mass market. For example panzer dragoon is a cult game, it does not appeal to the mass public. While the game is undoubtledly good, most people do not want to play it.
Are racing games innovative? Are sports games? Apart from a few original features they are not however they are still extremely popular. If companies stop taking risks and go for the safe games it is because the games will sell well - no company ever did bad by deciding to make products that sell well.
If the industry decides to stop producing cult games why should they care? If you or I decide never to play another game it wont really affect their industry, it is the mass appeal games that make the money and for a game to have mass appeal it does not need to be innovative.
This said I dont think there will be a lack of innovative games on the market, some game developers are artists trying to make the most interesting game possible and start up producers will allways try to get an edge on the current market. However one thing that I think is really possible is that innovative games will not produce a series or the series will be stopped.
For example: The panzer dragoon series is not profitable, why should anyone make another? To appease the fans? Another good example is the Shenmue series, that has a great cult following as well and if Sega were to make games to satisfy the cult fans then shenmue 3 would already be released. The bottom line is Sega is a company and it makes products to make money, it doesnt have enough money to spend making non profitable cult games.
I think there will be innovative titles as companies try to break-into or create a new market. However if these titles are not widely accepted then they are failures as far as profit goes regardless of their cult followings. A small group of dedicated fans will never have the same importance as the mass market.
Man these âmarketâ discussions are getting in my way.I am now afraid everytime I check the Seekers Stronghold.Itâs that and the big posts 
If Sega (a company famous for experimenting with new ideas) lived by that philosophy, Shenmue would never have been created. After all, Shenmueâs gameplay was unknown to the mass market and there was no guarantee it would rake in huge profits.
Smaller companies donât even need to develop mainstream titles to stay afloat, because not only does that mean competing with larger companies, but their games also risk falling off the radar. Small developers often cater for a much smaller audience by providing them with the type of âcultâ games most mainstream gamers couldnât care less about, and yet earn all the profits they need. Should this develop-only-mainstream-games logic apply to them too?
Sega has a choice between focusing its resources on developing mainstream titles or titles it believes will garner mainstream attention, or creating something new and untested by the mass market. I canât see why Sega canât do both. Returning to the development of sales disasters is probably not an option at the moment, but if Sega can turn them into something profitable now that itâs in a stronger position financially, then why stand in its way?
Uh, the only reason why the Panzer Dragoon series is considered a âcultâ game is because Segaâs stupid marketing department doesnât know how to properly market! If the Saturn and the Panzer Dragoon series were properly marketed, then it would have been a HUGE hit among mainstream gamers. Take Squaresoft, for example. Every single one of their games suck and come with the same branding (good graphics, bad music, non-existant storyline etc), but yet their crappy games sell because they know how to market them - the same thing applies to the retarded empire known as Electronic Arts.
But Sega was stupid, and decided to give all of its marketing money towards games like Sonic the Hedgehog and all that other childish rubbish, when they should have been backing games like Phantasy Star, Shining Force, Landstalker, and of course, the Panzer Dragoon series. If the idiot suits would stop thinking that all of the masses are braindead (granted, most of them are) then they would definitely get the respect they deserve on masterpieces such as PDS.
Geoffry - I did not say that sega or any other firm would or should not try innovative ideas, infact previous to the paragraph you quoted me on i wrote
What I was trying to say is that games developers will probably not return to a series that has not been a selling success regardless of how good the game actually was. I think Sega does live by this philosophy, they do try new and innovative ideas to make good games as do a lot of producers, however if a game does not sell profitably then it has been a failure. They could put a new spin on the series (as seen by the changes to PD Orta compared to previous outings) to try and gain more appeal but it is still about sales.
The Shenmue series is slightly different, Sega are almost certainly not going to do well from a 3rd shenmue(read not make lots of money), the development costs have been very high for the previous 2 games and sales werent very good for Shenmue 2X. A reason for them to finish shenmue off is more for artistic integrity than anything else, that series is more high profile than the panzer dragoon series.
In a way, not producing sequels for games like the PD series does help to maintain originality in their game production, Panzer dragoon has been done and wasnt popular so why not try something new?
Of course mass appeal games will allways play a big part in major games producers, Sega need guaranteed profits from games at the moment which they are bound to get from games such as Sonic. EA games is a good example of a mainstream games producer, they are more concerned with profits rather than game quality and constantly push their producers to releasing games on time, even if they are not ready.
You are right about smaller companies releasing innovative games, without a heavyweight name backing your game or sufficient resources to do good marketing, small firms have to try and get an edge to break into or create a new gaming market. There is a price to pay for this however, a lot of them dont make it. Successful small companies often get bought out and then the bigger company mainstreamises their games anyway.
I dont think any company would specifically aim to make a cult game, surely they want their game to be as popular as possible? Innovative games (such as PD/Shenmue/Shining Force/Deus Ex) often end up with a cult following because they are good even though they sell well. However it simply doesnt make sense for a publisher to return to a non profitable series, the happieness of cult fans isnt as important as money.
another reason because sega games are so costy (and therefor a big financial risc) is that the developers start from scratch olmost every single time!
There is nothing like a Halflife2 or Unreal Engine to them. They re-invent the wheel every single time, wich wastes a lot of money they could invest in proper marketing AND innovative gameplay.
Donât ever call Sonic the Hedgehog a âchildishâ game. Ever. You got that? Good.
There is a diference between âa small profitâ to âno profitâ
If a series makes enough money to cover its costs and makes the producer gain recognition and prizes, why not continue it? You can always make a boring, buggy game like Enter the Matrix to gain big bucks.
Money is not the only thing a company should think about. The value of a brand should be high too. Every game that Sid Meier makes sell well because the guy is a genius and his name is very well know and valuable. His name alone makes money.
So a good game company can obtain the best of both worlds, money and recognition. Of course you need a good management/marketing to make it. And, sadly, good management/marketing are a very rare thing nowadaysâŚ