Not exactly a bad thing, Activision especially is hugely successful from this. Xbox fans like Xbox franchises, we like to see them do well because that means we get more of them. The more successful they are, the more risks Microsoft can take elsewhere with other developers who are still looking to make "their Halo".

Bungie wanted to own their IP and reap the rewards. Any grandeur about stifled creativity is immediately debunked with Destiny...a sci-fi FPS game that looks and plays eerily like Halo ...only not nearly as good. 5 years for that? Oh what could have been.

Can't blame Microsoft that Halo has a longer lifetime than Killzone, Motorstorm, wipeOut, Syphon Filter, Colony Wars, Star Hawk, Jak & Daxter, Playstation All Stars, Puppeteer, Sly Cooper, Driveclub.....Gran Turismo.

Microsoft just know how to nurture like a loving father, Sonys deadbeat Dad approach with cutting and running is why most of their studios are shutting down.

Sony "allowed" - sheeez, they probably begged -  Geurilla to leave Killzone to die for Horizon because of Shadow Falls meta score and sales. It will be many years before Halo, Gears and Forza come close to that. Had it sold 10 million with a 95% meta, Killzone 5 would be their next game.

Unfortunately Microsofts top tier studios are indeed victims of their own success...and success ....and success.

Uh no, Sony shut the team down and fired the employees. That's "freedom" to pursue new ip?

Sony shut down the project after 4 years or so, being able to work on a project that obviously wasn't working out (otherwise it wouldn't have been shut down, duh) is most definitely freedom to pursue a new IP.

Uh, just because the PS3 was such a pain to program for and Sony developers had to assist on a ****load of PSN games seldom qualifies. But yeah, freedom. Freedom is a new PSN game in 1 decade.

Can't even check Wikipedia, can you? Here I'll help you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCE_San_Diego_Studio

Or even milk at all. Would you drink 10 year old milk?

So now you're saying it's ok for a studio to work on existing others IPS.

Never said it wasn't, the problem arises when a studio is forced to work with nothing but one IP, ever.

Because i might not be around in 15-20 years, that's how long it will take for those IP to get Killzoned...and even then, there's always reboots.

Ah, so ND got to make TLOU because Uncharted wasn't popular or good enough? Lol. But hey, hur dur Killzone (nevermind that Shadow Fall was the fastest selling Killzone title and that Horizon's development started way before that game released)

Except I can point out that that of microsofts 21 internal studios, 14 of them are only working on new IP or their last game was, 1 of them a spin off of an existing ip with a slightly different name and the other 6 existing IPS. So now, Microsoft just as much allows new IP, but because Gears was better managed then Killzone and Halo better managed than Gran Turismo you're going to get all uppity because Geurilla threw in the towel. Promise, when Gears sells 2 million and metas low 70's that studio will have the "freedom" to make a new IP.

I can pull numbers out of my ass as well, for the majority of these 14 studios we have no idea what they are working on, we don't even know if they are working on actual games at all, at least half of those are working on Hololens and they could well just be making non-gaming applications for that. Also again, good job ignoring that Horizon has been in development before Shadow Fall and you should maybe check something called Gears Judgment it might surprise you with its sales.

Of course it didn't

It didn't sell on lies, it sold on new IP and the careful nurturing from Mike Rowe soft touch. Kinect adventures. Yum yum yum.

Can you read? Then maybe you should read the articles you post or at least the freaking headlines. And the Kinect very much sold on false advertisement and lies, fooled enough people but didn't last for a second run, that's why Kinect is now dead.

But GT is at 73 million with GT6, Halo is 65 million without Halo 5. We expect it will exceed GT franchise Week 1. Minecraft got there yonks ago.

We? Who the hell is we? Who in the world is so out of touch that he believes that Halo 5 would sell  8 million in one week? If those GT6 numbers can even be trusted, wouldn't be the first time that they were undertracked. And great about Minecraft, don't give MS credit for something they had nothing to do with.

Careful management man. How often was GT5 delayed? Also, lets not forget GT demos count in that figure. Halo betas don't count.

Ah yeah the management was so "careful" that Bungie eventually got sick of it. And who gives a shit if the demos are counted? Are they sold? Yes. Then they should count as SALES of the series.

Yes. Steve Ballmer invented Minecraft in the year 2000 and one!

Bad management man, that could have been avoided if GT5 came out in 2009, still would have been a year late tho. Also isn't The Last of Us on like 5 or 7 platforms now? That's only 1 million a platform.

Brilliant joke man, huehuehuehue.

Ditto all the PS exclusives mentioned. Didn't Sony bundle Uncharted for 2 straight years. Isn't Uncharted 3's multiplayer FTP? Gran Turismo?

Oh man yeah, you really got me there those 5.4 million units GT5 sold in its first 6 weeks, surely were all bundles, just like the 3.4 million UC3 sold in its first 9 weeks.

Uncharted did? It only did like 120k in the US first month.

Well good thing that Uncharted 1 isn't the only game in the series, in case you hadn't noticed it has had 2 more mainline games up to this point and will have a 3rd and last one coming next year and like I said UC3 sold 3.4 million in 9 weeks.

It's thin taking into account last year and launch too.

Aha thanks for telling me your opinion on that, I'll put it down in my notebook about things I never asked for and don't care about either.

Jesus Christ please try harder.

If that's the case, how come Horizon wasn't Geurillas next game after KZ2? Sony forced them to make KZ3 and KZ Shadow Fall, then "co-incidentally" when the series could scrape the bottom of the barrel no more, that's when they had the freedom to make a new IP?Unprecedented support.

All games don't take the same time to develop. Horizon is an open-world RPG and a new IP so it took a lot more time to develop than any KZ game. Hell KZ2 took a lot of time to develop, and that was in an existing IP. Guerilla has two teams and the KZ2 team has been working on Horizon since KZ2. KZ3 and SF had a different team working on them.

Yeah, Sony allowed them the "freedom" to make the new IP 8 years later when the metas started tanking.

As I said it began development before the meta started "tanking" with KZ: SF.

Uncharted 3's metas dropped heavily too for a 2 year period and a single game,. It dropped more than Halos had in a decade, or Gears of Wars entire series. It also failed to sell more than Uncharted 2 with a bigger userbase . That's why ND are getting away from it. When 4 metas in the high 8's....s'gonna be fun.

Uncharted 3's meta dropped by just 4 points from Uncharted 2, from 96 to 92. Halo 4's meta also dropped 4 points from Reach from 91 to 87. So tell me, which one looks worse here? Its definitely not Uncharted.

Reached 10 million over 5 years ago. ...and FM3 has been out less than 6 months. There've been 4 more games since then.

Do you have any idea of what we're talking about here? Forza games sell about 2-3 million on average, that's not better than Killzone which you say isn't a "commercial success". Apparently Microsoft still forces them to work on it, but Sony doesn't do the same to Guerilla. Way better approach to it, I say, which Microsoft needs to learn from.

Well, they wouldn't keep making them if they weren't successful would they? Thats why Microsoft is not limiting Rare and Lionheads potential and "allowing" them to make new IPS, because their last games were if anything, too successful right?

Oh really? Fable: Anniversary has a 68 on metacritic, worse than scraping the bottom of the barrel according to your own logic. Fable III had a 9 point decrease from Fable II's metacritic fora  single game. That's not exactly the best example of a too successful to be true IP.

Uh no, Geurilla are not two teams (unless you're referring to Geurilla Cambridge whos doing a Morpheus game) . If Guerilla were 2 teams, there would be a Killzone game this holiday and Horizon next year, which according to you has will have a whopping 8 years development.

As there is no Killzone this year or next and Geurilla confirmed, they only started work on their new IP just before Shadow Fall launched, you'll have to explain where Killzone is and why it took one team 8 years to make a single game, not only that but how they managed to "start" Horizon on PS4 in 2009 and KZ:SF in 2011 and finish KZSF in 2013, but not Horizon until 2016.

Where are you getting these calculations from? Guerilla does have two different teams, I'm talking about their Amsterdam studio. Horizon was probably conceptualized in 2010 and began development early in 2011. So about 5 years of development, which is par for the course for an open-world game.

There were signs with Killzone 3, SF confirmed it. Odds are they saw it coming.

There are no "signs" of anything. And they can't foresee something which is entirely based on opinions.

In 2011, Halo had dropped from a 97 to a 91 with Reach in 10 years. Gears had gone from a 94 to a 91 in 5 years. Uncharted went from a 96 to a 92 in a single entry in 2 years.

You completely ignored what I said. In 2 years Halo also fell by just as much as Uncharted, and from a lower score to begin with. If you're gonna talk about lifetime Uncharted increased from 88 to 92 in 4 years.

Hate to break it to you, meta wise, Uncharted 4 is their Halo 4, but won't sell like it. Do I really need to explain why Sony is carting it off to die in favour of a better selling higher scoring TloU? Now if Uncharted were selling 10-14 million, it certainly wouldn't be, regardless of score.

How is Sony carting it off to die? It has a sequel in development, doesn't seem it will cart off to die anytime soon.

If it sold 2-3 million on average, the series wouldn't have hit 10 million in 3 games. FM did about 2 million. F2 in excess of 4 and 3 a little higher and 4 a little higher still.

Bullshit. You're just taking numbers out of your ass here. Forza 4 sold just a little more tahn 3 million, F2 didn't sell 4 million, F3 was the peak of the franchise due to excessive bundling.

Only a fool would allow Guerilla to keep making KZ games after SF, let alone force. You really want one of your studios to spend 3 more years on a franchise that sells meh and scores meh and profits meh. Thankfully, they knew when to quit.

Yet MS does the same with Fable. And one game scoring meh doesn't make Killzone a meh franchise,  one game which btw was constrained by a system launch.

A way better approach would be to never let it get that far.

Yet Microsoft goes even farther with Fable.

Yes, you seemed to have missed my sarcasm. Microsoft isn't allowing Rare and Lionhead to make new IPS because ...ohhh expression and art and la de da, it's because because Kinect Sports Resort and the last Fable didn't meet expectations.

So now we have Sea of Thieves and whatever LH bring out. Here's how it will work:

• Sea of Thieves/LH Game sells 5-8 million - sequels until you can fathom no more. 8+ years
• Sea of Thieves/LH Game sells 3-4 million - if constantly that high, a trilogy of games before steam runs out. 5+ years
  
• Sea of Thieves/LH Game sells 1-2 million - Not worth the effort., IPS abandoned, back to the drawing board. New IP...or old IP, just not the same IP.

All of the above have certain sway with metascores, if a game sells slightly under expectations, buy scores vastly better then anticipated, it can elevate its viability status and vice versa.

The bolded applies to the following Playstation franchises:

Motorstorm, Killzone, LBP, Uncharted (because of TloU being more successful) - hence Driveclub, Horizon, Dreams and TloU.

LBP sold 5 million +, Uncharted routinely sells 6 million +, the very basis of your claim is wrong. Hell Uncharted has a fourth game in the works, and doesn't really lack a huge fanbase. With uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection and PS4's success there is a good chance that Uncharted 4 will be the best-selling game in the franchise. LBP though, despite selling 5 million + with its first game, has clearly run out of steam. Its how you carry forward a franchise, not how well the first game sells. LBP 3 wasn't even developed by Sony's first-party but outsourced to a third-party developer.