It's probably a balance of several factors that determine game quality. The parts needed to duplicate the action on the show, how much the public is willing to pay for a game of that type, and most important of all, it's potential longevity. At one point, Milton Bradley ran into a bad time where Break The Bank, Blockbusters, Now You See It, and a couple of others no sooner hit the store shelves than the shows were cancelled. No shows, no promotion. From then on, they backed off. Since game shows are so volatile, they're a high-risk box game venture. To protect themselves, they probably won't put much into them. For every Feud game sold in a day, probably 50 Yahtzees are sold. That's where the money is. I thought MILLIONAIRE by Pressman was a well-made recent game. Maybe not worth $25+ dollars, but good. I'm sure they felt they had a long-term winner on their hands, so the packaging was matchingly elaborate. This week, it's $6.98. I imagine Pressman did all right, tho, while the show was hot. Most of the current crop is pretty pedestrian, hoping to make the companies a few bucks before the shows disappear again. Pressman can't lose much with their new Wheel and Jeopardy games, since they're re-using the production dies. What Endless does that is smart is sell most of their tv games as nostalgia items. Millions of us grew up with The Newlywed Game and Password, so even if only a few hundred thousand folks bother to watch the re-runs on GSN, they can still appeal to the memories of those without GSN. It's probably why we won't see home versions of GSN originals.
