[BlargMcLarg]

>That said, Nintendo continues to produce innovative games.

Nintendo is falling into the same trap if you look hard enough, and mostly innovates for its series rather than the industry as a whole. Remakes or iterations are rampant among established developers due to the lower risks and relatively high earnings.

Even indies suffer the latter. Not too many indies have a hit again when they create a game too different from their original hit. The best option they have is to iterate incrementally, not change the formula in any wild way.

This isn't even a bad thing (iterate until you perfect the formula, spin-offs and minigames to test things), but it does show how established names have a humongous stranglehold on most of the market with relatively little effort put in, and pawn off the risks to indies who have no other choice but to innovate.

[account42]

> Even indies suffer the latter. Not too many indies have a hit again when they create a game too different from their original hit.

For indies a confounding factor is that the first game often has really been in development for the creator's entire life up to that point - not neccessarily literally but by amasssing creative ideas that they can then pour into that project. For the second game to be significantly different they then need to come up with new ideas in a now much shorter time unless they take a break from game development in between.

[BlargMcLarg]

I agree with the former, I don't agree with the latter. By nature of processes, experience and software, it is obviously far easier to push out the same thing, both in terms of time or in terms of cost. However, nothing indicates that indie developer needs to make a game in a shorter timeframe than before.

They could bring the money of their former success to the new project, allowing them to push out the game in a shorter timeframe simply by living off the profits or hiring others to help them develop. But this isn't a necessity.