Trebor

Original games such as World of Goo or Nebacular Drop (a student project which lead to Valve employing them which lead to "The cake is a lie" Portal). There are original ideas out there MunkyMagik, it's just that publishers such as EA don't think they're worth the risk. If you've got a game like Gears or Halo that's become a well known franchise of course you're going to release a sequel and make guaranteed money. If you have an IP (intellectual property) that isn't proven, is probably going to appeal to only a niche market or sometimes if it's produced by an unknown company it's less likely to be made/published. That's why I like XBLA and the Indie Developer awards and even some things that are made for homebrew. Cheaper to make, a way of getting your foot in the door into the games industry and a way to gain credibility.

As for gaming companies taking ideas from each other, that's been going on for years now. Heck even the Xbox with it's much touted Live wasn't the first console to be able to go online. It was the only console to make it very successful and popular IMO. If games companies kept everything to themselves even our controllers would have been affected. Nintendo were the first to have the D-pad, Sony were the first to have shoulder buttons (I think). All the things we take for granted in consoles and PC gaming today have been ideas that have been borrowed from somewhere else and improved upon. I quite like all the interfaces of todays consoles and only think that the NXE is an improvement over the old one. As to which 1 is best I don't know yet as I don't have a PS3 or the NXE (tonight hopefully).

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Trebor! The Freshmaker