I've mentioned the excellent Wii game Zack and Wiki here before. The game got fantastic reviews and was a bold departure in style from most of the other current releases, but it hasn't been selling well in the shops. I think this is partly due to big name games coming out and people are voting with their cash for the tried-and-tested titles rather than purchasing something different. This is going to end up leaving us with a games industry that follows the tragic path the movie industry has taken: terrible remakes of classic films and numerous sequels rather than original and risky movies.
Sonic is a classic example of a once-great title that just trades on it's name to produce shoddy titles. If we don't buy the games that are a little more unusual then games that have the potential to reinvent genres simply won't get made. There are already way too many Brain Training clones on the Wii and far too many bad first-person shooters on the Xbox, and unless we start supporting the more unusual, that's all we are going to be left with. There are games that try to do something different and fail miserably with bad execution and poorly thought-out plots, but when the reviews are great we need to buy these titles. The problem is that most of us can't buy numerous titles on a whim so picking and choosing does end up a conservative business.
The latest title with potential in the weird game stakes is My Beautiful Katamari. You get to roll a ball around a landscape picking up elements from the environment by rolling over them until you get big enough to move on to the next level. It's out on the Xbox, and although it's a sequel to the PlayStation 2 game it's easily strange enough to qualify for the "something different" category. There was a PS3 version being developed but this was apparently dropped due to porting issues and the resources have been put towards working on a Wii version.
There is also a game out now for the Wii and the DS called Jenga, which is a video game version of the popular wooden blocks game. I know. Exactly who thought this would be a good idea is unclear, but I think it's safe to say you should probably steer clear when looking for your next unusual game. It also costs four times as much as the real game. Surely somebody should have put a stop to this at the ideas stage?