Pretty much. The Rise of DD kills, for some titles, the need for a publisher. Before, you needed them to do QA, to shoulder the costs of manufacturing the game, and to advertise it. Now, you can release on the net for next to nothing, and use viral marketing/demos/etc to get exposure. Not to mention lets plays and the like.
I really doubt that. A setup like what the xbone is using can't be cheap to implement, and I doubt sony would spend their limited funds on such a thing. the money is better spent moneyhatting a few ore exclusives, which generates far more profit.
All depends on the game, really. A lot drop in price rather dramatically these days, usually withing 4-6 months. PC titles and retail console games are normally around the same cost, outside major sales.
Actually, my first thought here was actually anti-torture training. You could use the googles to realistically show whatever your subject is in 3d, while using some subtle pressure/temperature change/etc to fool the person to actually thinking they are in pain.
You don't need a lot of money to program. But you do need money to higher staff like musicians, artists, game designers, sound techs, actors, mocap, marketing, etc and so forth. Games rose in complexity, and thus, so did budgets. Most indie games don't approach the size, scope, or complexity of such games, so naturally they have a reduced budget.
That gets you the gamecube fanbase, not the wii's. The Wii had a unique novelty to it, and got lots of non gamers to buy into it. Nothing about the wii U yet has that same draw to it. It needs it's wii sports/Brain age/ Wii fit game. Something that makes you forget its a game console. I just have no idea what that could be, given the wii u's biggest draw, the touch aspect, is pretty much everywhere these days.
There was something of a transition from older games to 3d ones though, given the rise of first 3d cards and then GPUs. Convincing people to throw down hundreds just to play prettier games took quite a while to accomplish. Getting devs to embrace it also was a bit of a chore, as you had competing apis, some proprietary some not, and rapid tech advancement.
From the leaks, the next xbox is basically the same or similar hardware tot he ps4, just with a few ms tweaks as opposed to the tweaks sony made for the ps4. If you are hoping for BC, iId count that out unless something is vastly wrong with the leaked info. Kinect seems to be a big part of it though, and I have read they are going for an all in one media center, much in line with their previous e3 offerings.
As for steambox? Rigtht now Valve has to answer how they aren't building another 3DO. The Ouya, with it's yearly refresh, is basically just another google tv or apple tv at this point.
No one cared about linux on the ps3 outside a few small circles, so no one really cared about losing it. Hard to sympathize with a cause no one honestly cares about.
Keep in mind, he was trying to sell secrets and dev kits to the highest bidder it seems. Freezing his accounts could be a standard response to stopping ill gotten gains from being laundered once he was found out.
The project $10 stuff isn't exclusive to the playstation though, the xbox and PC do it a ton as well. Hell, PC's have no used game market period in most places, due to cd keys and activation codes. I don't think such codes and DLC, passes, etc are going anywhere, as the publishers love them.
