When it comes down to it, it's the money. That's it.
And I don't necessarily mean it's about the big companies wanting to turn over a $billion on their latest iteration of some regurgitated franchise with non-inventive gameplay or anything like that.
But even us Indie devs... we WANT to make innovative, new, fantastic games that push the very boundaries of what one perceives as a "video game", but we're bogged down by the one thing - money.

We have the technical skill, many have the experiential drive and knowledge and oft put together teams to satisfy every criteria except one - money. Someone has to pay for it, and unless you're an ace at marketing or speaking "bank manager-ish" you don't stand a chance. Government funding, grants and even venture capital is drying up. No-one wants to take a risk.
And if they're not risking their money, then (many) video games developers aren't risking their companies, teams and time to develop these games.

Shame, really.

Back in January of this year, a cool little game closed it's doors at http://www.playthenewsgame.com/ The idea was pretty simple - they present you with breaking news, or specific news stories that could have heavy bias etc, and then you guess what you think the outcome would be.

It was a cool idea, and I believe was done as a demo for the whole news-as-a-game idea, but it was really fun!

All those corporate types who think that Piracy is the "bane of society" or similar unsupported claims need to only look at these people, and how by changing the way they release their products they've done incredibly well (some even better than when they were with the large organisations):

Trent Reznor/NIN - he releases all his albums for free with a "pay what you think it's worth" mentality.
Radiohead - they released an album under the same idea as NIN, and they profited wildly from it
Cory Doctorow - releases all his books for free, and seems to sell more because he reaches a greater audience.
Sins of a Solar Empire - they released their game completely DRM free, which definately made it easier to pirate... but at the same time reached a greater number of gamers and probably increased their sales accordingly.

I know the list keeps going, but the thing is that those who recognise the Internet as a valid medium and adapt their sales tactics to suit it achieve more. As opposed to those who want to change the Internet to suit their old and outdated business models.

For normal releases, or episodes etc, I prefer digital distribution...
But when there's a "life-changing" title that's just come out, I want the special all-singing-all-dancing metal box, bobble head edition on my shelf!
Would we see the end of these versions too? :-(

I used the keychain in Mac OS X to create a code-signing certificate. That lets me finish and compile to the ASM version (rather than the x86 version for the simulator).
From the instructions that I followed (can't find the link right now, sorry :( ) you can get the certificate authorised on the device and then get the apps on the iPhone through XCode.
All that said though, I don't have an iPhone and simply mail the .app builds to my tester who has a device - jailbroken, I think.

All this because I've not been contacted yet about my actual development program application!

How had I missed Brutal Legend!? Awesome :)
and getting Psychonauts now - good find, thanks man!

I guess I must be the only one who likes the more "mainstream" of these kinds of games in:
Sam and Max: Hit the Road
Full Throttle
Day of the Tentacle (Maniac Mansion 2)
and I only mean "mainstream" as TellTale games has done the latest Sam and Max's, and Lucas _were_ doing a Full Throttle sequel but canned it years ago :(

You're absolutely right, it does have (almost) all that we need! I've got so many apps to choose from - you'd think that I could find these things from the right sort of Google search and use of keywords...