Game Innovation Goes to the Nintendogs

Indeed, those sales are among the best ever for a new Nintendo franchise, says company spokeswoman Beth Llewelyn. Better yet, the game seems to be encouraging new sales of the DS, she says. And anecdotal evidence suggests the game has found an audience outside the traditional gamer demographic of young males.

Meanwhile, the game could prove to be a big money-maker for Nintendo. Handheld games are typically cheaper to develop than games for consoles. And publishers usually see the highest margins on games they develop in-house that don't involve expensive licenses or royalties.

Nintendo's not alone in finding success with an unconventional game. Titles such as Tetris in the 1980s and Myst in the 1990s showed that off-beat games can be cross-cultural hits.

But the chances of another Tetris or Myst -- or a Nintendogs -- emerging from the game industry seems to be growing increasingly slim, analysts say.

"The economics [of the industry] are driving the situation to where people are somewhat risk-averse. You don't see a lot of experimentation," says Van Baker, an analyst with Gartner, an industry research firm.

The major game companies are all public entities whose investors have generally pushed for predictable -- and ever growing -- returns. But with each new game system, the cost of developing games has generally gone up. Some analysts, for instance, are expecting the cost of developing top titles for the next generation of consoles -- due to hit store shelves over the next year -- to rise to $20 million from about $10 million on current consoles.

In the face of these twin obstacles, most publishers have turned to using franchise titles, often involving known, licensed properties.

This year's version of EA's Madden, for instance, was the 16th for the title. Even when the major publishers introduce new properties, they are often simply knock-offs of existing games or genres. One of THQ's(THQI Quote) launch games for Microsoft's(MSFT Quote) Xbox 360, for instance, is a new title called Saint's Row, which has all the feel of a Grand Theft Auto wannabe.