I know this post is old, but I somehow stumbled upon it and wanted to say a few things.
I'm a consumer, so I don't have a good idea of what it's like to be a developer, but what prompted myself to look into Itch.io more often was all the talk about developer revenue and my general distaste towards Epic (don't worry, I won't turn this into an EGS rant). I think discussing the advantages of Itch.io can leverage a lot of people, especially in the current video games climate.
Beyond that, just simply making great games and promoting them (as well as Itch.io) is all you really need to do. People are drawn to great games and they will generally go to any lengths to get them. I for one have been made aware of several great, interesting and weird titles just by mindlessly browsing the internet and watching content creators such as Vinesauce.
Lastly, I think Itch.io would benefit from having some more ambitious and larger games existing on the platform. While I do love all the little experiments and game jams on here, a typical "consumer" generally wishes to find more "complete" experiences they can invest some time into. I have already started to see some more titles like this appear on the platform during 2019 and I think that's great!
Anyway, I hope this info at least helps someone else out there who stumbles on this post like I did.
Edit: Another thing that may help is encouraging consumers to follow you on Twitter. I noticed that after following one indie developer, Twitter started to reccommend tons of other indies and the games they are working on due to proximity.
Well necromancing an old forum thread isn't ALWAYS a bad thing (it mostly is, but in some cases it isn't).
When it comes to your distaste about Epic. Epic used to be Epic Megagames, and were back then a bunch of enthusiastic developers themselves, and yeah they were semi-indie. Games like Epic Pinball, Jill of the Jungle and Jazz Jackrabbit, show the passion they had back then. Now that Epic has become a true AAA company, I miss that spirit, and let's say, most AAA companies are going that way, only a few exceptions.
I like products (could be anything) made with passion for the job. Like I said, could be anything. Like Disney's movie "Snow White" in which Walt Disney literally put his own house on the line to get the funding to create that movie, and the animators would only be paid if the movie was a success, but you never know beforehand if it will be, so the animators too took a risk, but in the end the result was worth it, although the movie may not be completely fit for modern standards, but hey, this is the time pre-WWII we're talking about. And so I also like games written with passion. Some of them may look amateur, but they are really cool nevertheless... Sites like itch.io and Game Jolt do have such games.
A downside is that thanks to tools making coding very very easy these days, there are also a lot of products out there that never get finished, or some people who mindlessly dump some assets together. The coming of the internet is also responsible for this, though. Back in my day (NOW I sound like an old man), there was no internet, or at least, only very little people had it. You had to come up with something really great to appeal magazines, and that wasn't exactly easy. And indeed jams are fun, but I prefer to aim for game that require time to develop rather than a game that must be ready in less than a week.
And yeah, I guess I should be using Twitter more myself. I never liked that medium, but it appears to have great effects if you manage to write that "perfect tweet".
There are two really good things about the Epic store and one thing that might be good or bad long term:
1.) It's a major platform (as in has AAA games) pushing a better revenue split for developers. I thank GameJolt and Itch for starting this, and I am glad to see Epic taking it seriously too
2.) The financial support for some developers to give them a certain amount of money to develop and launch their games exclusively on Epic (matching or exceeding the expected sales they would've got)
3.) Giving developers money to release their games for free
Point 1 is already something Itch does. The only thing that could improve is exactly what you're saying, a few serious, bigger games. Not necessarily AAA. But then again, stuff like Celeste is on here, so they already kind of do it in terms of the big Indie games.
Point 2 I don't see as something that Itch could afford. Really only comes from Epic's success with Fortnite and investments. Maybe there's a crowdsourcing angle that could be exploited? Although I feel Patreon already handles this well enough
Point 3 is yet to be determined if it'll be good (could distort the market even more :S), and also ties into Point 2 in terms of me not sure if Itch could afford it.
But I am glad that we are seeing some improvements for the smaller devs out there, thanks to these platforms. I do think you're onto something with bigger game releases.
All I will add is that your comment regarding "market distortion" basically outlines the issue I have with Epic. I don't blame developers for taking deals (my beef is with Epic only), but I really think exclusives should be discouraged in every industry. Most of the biggest companies in the world used the same or similar strategies, so I really don't have high hopes Epic will make things "better" in the long run. I hope I am wrong about this though.
Anyway, I do want to avoid any further discussion since this topic can get very heated easily and I would be derailing this discussion.
Just to balance this out, I actually did stumble on this post by asking google if "Itch.io accepted AAA games" in hindsight it was kind of a silly question to ask (IMO) since it would go against what Itch.io *is*.
Bigger indie games I feel would give the platform the most leverage since I imagine Itch.io has this stigma that it's just for "amatuers" or for "small experimental titles". Maybe if enough people shop at Itch.io or even simply engage with the site, we could see game jams or events appear that give developers funding or resources to make/finish larger projects.