Central publishing for games is one of the scourges of the consumer market. When a major publisher, like EA releases a game that recieves critical review, but sells poorly, they cancel the series because they are a major corporation and they have huge upkeep costs and demand huge profits. When an indie game sells poorly, but recieves great reviews, the franchise of games will often continue, which results in a continuation of a franchise into a wonderful series of masterpieces.

    Examples of this are Avernum and Beyond Good And Evil. Avernum is an awesome franchise and gets great reviews, but it is obscure. Its games are great, but I doubt they sell more than five digits, whereas Beyond Good And Evil was published by Ubisoft, got great reviews, sold poorly, and now can only be found in bargain bins and GameTap (Get it on GameTap, by the way!). This is why central publishers are ruining the games industry.

    An inverse example is Halo. Halo, quite literally, is a dish of the same old food. Tribes 2 had as many gametypes as Halo had, but Halo sold wonderfully because it was hooked in with the huge consoles. Tribes Vengeance was more fun than Halo. Sure Halo has its good moments, but it's a gladitorial deathmatch compared to the fine art of the Tribes series.