With MS and Gears, the issue wont be keeping the up the quality, i think the issue will be keeping the franchise fresh and new.

True stuff. Good post.

Hey man, Deception was pretty good

Prince of Persia got a lot better once Ubisoft started publishing the series. Sands of Time is still one of my favorite games.

Or because there's a history of when IPs are sold and aren't made by the original developers, more often than not they aren't as good? It happened with Crash Bandicoot and Spyro and many more, with lackluster results.....but it also happened with Metroid and Prince of Persia with great results.

This should be to temper expectations that "omg, not made by EPIC anymore? It's gonna suck" or conversely "X game became so much better after So and So Productions got their hands on it"

Let it be gauge of success/failure stories of IPs being sold instead of an auto-attack on Sony fans. It should be a legitimate concern that a big time franchise is being developed by someone else. I sure would be concerned if Uncharted 4 got developed some studio I've never heard of

What about fallout. I would say fallout 3 was better than 1 or 2.

We're talking about literally sold -- whether through sale of a business unit (like when Nintendo sold Rare to MS) or sale of the IP directly.

The publisher and/or the core dev team had to significantly change from prior releases.

Except that neither Nintendo or Bandai Namco own Xenogears, or have ever owned Xenogears. Square-Enix owns Xenogears, Bandi Namco owns Xenosaga, and Nintendo owns Xenoblade. This is essentially the same situation as Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. They are two seperate IPs, but Dark Souls has the perception of being a successor to Demon's Souls, even though it's in name only.

Same people, different publisher I think. Also the series (at least Xenogears) was already held in high regard

Most compelling example yet.

Any info on how much the core dev team changed? I know Interplay sold it because they fell on hard times --  it may also be that the core staff behind the original Fallout came to Bethesda following the sale.