Here's a little something thats pretty interesting; I was told that psychologically, when a person is exposed to a particular advertisement 6 - 10 times, it becomes 'familiar' , that in his brain, he immediately associates 'good feelings' with it, thus increasing the chances he/she will buy the product, even if indirectly if said product is happened upon.
Either way you just cannot overlook the significance of marketing, but marketing can cost just as much as development of a game...well at least they choose to spend that much, nevertheless, if thats what they feel(the publishers) they need to do to sell a game, thats a cost. So now we're faced with publishers not wanting to front the money to make a game for a genre that doesn't generate sales as they see it, PLUS, and this is the interesting part, they of course lump marketing in with that, which just increases the cost. So if more marketing means more sales, and less marketing less sales ( generally speaking ), wouldn't it stand that almost anything could sell if marketed as carefully as any product? That by virtue of not marketing, its a self-fullfilling prophecy that AG's dont sell. Not because there is no interest, but because no one knows?
Then again, you'd like to think people who do this for a living have somewhat of a clue, as money is all they care about, they certainly know how to read trends in gaming and customer demand. I dont think we've discovered something they haven't already thought about. That and 'risk assessment' isn't black and white, so while the genre could conceivably thrive, its not worth it to them to test the waters when they could go with another game that has much less risk(but could do still do terribly, fickle as the consumer is).
Cheers
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