I think the idea that having an easy mode in your game is somehow detrimental to the product is a little absurd. It could be accurate if you are on a super tight-development schedule, and because you are have to spend time on both designing and testing different difficulties you may not have time to do other things with the product (produce more content, polish, fix bugs, etc.) In that way, the quality of a product could be reduced. As long as you incorporate that into the deadlines though, there’s no reason for why having an additional option in a game for someone that wants to use it will somehow disrupt the rest of the title.

I’d also say I disagree with Leon’s point regarding Megaman, in that it is designed to be a hard game & you shouldn’t get away without a challenge, and being difficult is one of the primary points of the game, and here’s why:

Let’s take a game like say, Ninja Gaiden for Xbox – fairly difficult title, and certainly scales up with the difficulty. I know that when the Sigma remake came out for PS3 there was an easier difficulty included in the game, and I had a friend who picked it up.

The easiest difficulty level was a huge struggle for him. He eventually beat the game and felt that nice ‘accomplished’ feeling for beating something difficult. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve beat the game on the hardest difficulty with the highest rating – and I felt pretty accomplished about that too; the problem is that not all people are going to be capable of playing games at the same skill levels. The last game you (royal) played – the easiest difficulty setting may be a total cakewalk in your eyes, but I’d wager somebody out there is being run through the grinder on it.

In that way, I think having the option is good. Say a legion of unskilled players really like the flavour of megaman & would buy a megaman game, but they’re not skilled enough to make it through the first few levels. If that’s the case, undoubtedly they’ll be discouraged from buying a game they feel they can’t play, despite how much they may want to. An easier difficulty setting might open up the field a little and include more people, which would equate to better sales. Of course, I think it’s equally important to maintain the original difficulty to continue to satisfy the franchise’s carrying demographic.