Apple is selling a lot of tablets. Nintendo is not selling a lot of Wii-Us. I feel at times genuinely sad for console developers these days. I think there might honestly be some people out there who think they can make basically the same kind of game for the upcoming next-gen except with better tech.

“But I am innovating,” says the guy making the same game, except with better graphics.

Thinking about Nintendo brands often feels like a quaint exercise these days, but a modern Zelda set in the Link to the Past universe still seems like a viable idea for traditional fans. I love Link to the Past. Nostalgia, man. I wrote this column a few days ago on why that game was such a bright little star.

I expect dev culture to continue changing, too. Notice how we revere a lot of guys for making certain kinds of flame T-shirt badass boy-magazine console IP like, a generation or more ago? Our ideas about who captains the industry still come from a fading desire for a culture of celebrity, fueled by the last decade’s excitable fan press.

Those ideas are ever more ill-suited to the business reality. Despite its jarring failures, BioShock: Infinite is a far more interesting game than a lot of people knighted in our culture of veteranship would have come up with, and yet. Not that it won’t sell well. Curious to find out how well.

The next-gen isn’t going to save anyone. Better tech isn’t bringing us better games, yet. For now you have become indoctrinated to a dying cult, and clinging to it lines the pockets of the hardware business engine and nothing else.

Like, are you really, genuinely offended by this insult to the noble occupation of making yet more games with magic anime boobs in them*? Do people really see a ‘respect for art’ issue here, or are they just hanging onto every shred of their childhood games industry they can find? Are we just constantly having these kinds of arguments because we don’t have anything else to say for ourselves right now?

Probably related: Game Developer magazine is closing, if you hadn’t yet heard. We’re all chipping in to make the last issue memorable.

Speaking of viking funerals and dead gods, my latest Game of Thrones recap is up at Boing Boing. I actually like reading the comments there. Fun community!

*To be honest, I kinda like the Dragon’s Crown art, Kamitami’s art in general. Boobs aren’t evil. Not everything needs to be realistic. It’s the idea that a critic invites homophobia by… being critical of art, and then it blows up into some huge boring body-policing diversion that drives me crazy.