Why did people fall over themselves trying to pay for a chunk of turned plastic that takes minutes to produce yet resent paying a fraction for software that takes weeks to develop ? What is more, not only do they want it for free, they expect the same quality that they see produced by commercial teams who take months or even years over development.
Hm, yeah. Thanks for that wildly inaccurate comparison. See, if you're going by how long each unit takes to produce, then the games only take a few minutes to upload to someone's computer at NO COST except your bandwidth and the recipient's internet time. However, if you're going by how long the product itself takes to actually develop and design, I think you'll find that the unit itself, yet again comes out being the one that is both the most expensive and the most time-consuming by FAR.
So I appreciate your twisting of the facts, but no. That's not valid.
Anyway, I hardly see how this will ruin anything. The thing about homebrew on things like the PSP (pre-firmware update, that is.) and the Gameboy machines is that it's not a very visible part of them. Most people are completely unaware of it. With the GP2X, however, I'd assume that 100% of its current users are aware of the homebrew gaming, and that's a hell of a lot more than among the PC gamers, which is the other very homebrew-friendly platform.
Case in point: Kenta Cho. Awesome freeware games developer/ genius. Polished and fantastic and much much better than a lot of the games I see being sold on the PC indie market. Even though the indie developer/ publisher/ gamer triangle is quite successful on the PC, there are still tons of great freeware games being developed. Cave Story, anyone?
Of course, the GP2X market is much smaller than the PC market, but I still think there's something to go on here. My point is that I don't think it will have that much of an effect on the homebrew development.
And if all else fails, remember the immortal words of Yoghurt: Muychandize, muychandize, muychandize!
