Well, the "y u no finish?!" comment was really rhetorical and me just expressing frothing excitement..

But I do appreciate the honesty!
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Then there were the people whom I playtested the game on--some of whom were more PC gamers than classic console/arcade gamers--finding it 'meh', and given what I thought I needed to change to make it work commercially, I thought I bit off more than I could chew with this project.
This is a good thing. It is my firm belief that even if you are making a game as a hobby - you should attach a price tag to it. I don't think this should be as low as $1 as is this case with XBLIG games, I would actually encourage you to set the bar higher. It's fun to crunch numbers sometimes too. So I'll do that first.
Say your target is to make £1000. You sell your game for £1 a go, minus 30% from whatever publisher you're going through and you're looking at 70p a copy. Now you've gotta sell just under 1500 copies in order to make that goal. Add on top the need to cover expenses and you're talking about a hell of a lot.
On the other hand though, if you raise the price of your game to be on par with other doujin titles which is anywhere between $20 and $30 with a pressed disc release.. assuming lowest price point ($20) exchange rate gives you £11.71 per copy and you're looking at roughly an £800 or so expense to get a batch of 500 copies run.
But even then, you're looking at only 70 copies to cover the expense of getting the game pressed on to disc, which leaves you 430 remaining to sell. That's a potential £5000 you're now looking at for
half the sales figuresBasically the point I'm trying to make here is not "look how rich you can get from shmups!!" - but rather that by focusing on the niche audience (i.e this community) and looking at their demands (most people want physical copies, most people will pay a reasonable amount for your game) - you'll actually end up making the same amount off a very limited audience.
This doesn't mean that you're ripping off your audience either. The fact that there are people in this community who will gladly pay £10, £15 or £20 for a good shooter means that they appreciate the value of your game. I don't think you want to stress yourself out by focusing on people who think your game is worth only $1.
The second part of this point is that by increasing the price point and physical value of your product and immediately shrinking your range of customers (having admitted defeat and accepting that you will not make millions) - you now have a clearer idea as a developer of the kind of game you want to aim for. This puts a higher pressure on you to make sure that the game is up to scratch and worth the price tag that you put on it. But you have already won half the battle by narrowing down and identifying the type of player you want to target the game at.
You can't sell Mario to someone who just doesn't like platformers.
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Then there were the people whom I playtested the game on--some of whom were more PC gamers than classic console/arcade gamers--finding it 'meh'
The distinction here isn't really "pc gamers" - since there's a lot of good players here who are PC gamers as well. By upping the price point of your game, you're already filtering this noise out. All that remains is the hardcore fanbase who WANT your game.
I know all about the long depression that comes with making these games, but I realised a little while ago a big part of this was trying to cater for people who simply wouldn't care about the game. It was not so long ago I had my own thread deleted on request due to stress and life balance which gave me time to think about wtf I was actually headed with this demented genre.
Also, don't forget despite the constant never ending shitstorm of posts - this is a VERY solid community. Not only do you have fellow developers who will happily playtest your beta releases (a lot of players would rather have the final build though) but you have an abundance of magazine writers, newspaper writers and people with connections to anime conventions, game conventions in both the east and the west. Don't be afraid to just poke around and ask these people for help. You'll be surprised to learn that they actually want to help you out more than you may realise at first - the big problem is that if nobody KNOWS about your game... they can't show support for something that they dont know exists!

tl;dr - stay on the radar, love the community and it will love you back. Even if its sometimes a little harsh..

Hope that helps.. somehow!