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jarrod on 07 July 2010
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wholikeswood said:
jarrod said:
tingyu said:

- SCE has so many studios under its belt: Japan Studio, Media Molecule, Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Santa Monica, to name a few. Sony has the largest number of high quality first party game studios in the big 3, although not as profitable as Nintendo (Pokemon Studio overkill any of the Studio mentioned before).

Sucker Punch is 3rd party.  

Also, while Sony has the most studios (barely I might add, just one more than Nintendo), Nintendo actually has a similar amount of staff within it's studios (EAD is HUGE, with near 800 people and 6 sub-divisions, bigger than Sony's largest 2 studios put together).  They're about the same size overall, while Microsoft employs probably about half as many people at it's game development studios (though Microsoft's been expanding rapidly in recent years).

Sucker Punch are 2nd party, surely?

And Microsoft have closed down almost as much as they've expanded...

2nd party is a made up term.  Nintendo created it to "explain" their relationship with Rare in the mid 1990s.  All studios are either 1st party (internal and/or owned) or 3rd party (external and not owned).

Microsoft did do a lot of closing from 2006-2008.  They've been slowly building up since then, and not just with new studios like 343 or Good Science, but also expanding established studios like Rare and Turn 10.

Anyway, full list of active software R&D studios for each... actually counting them up, it looks like Nintendo has the most (I must've been thinking before the Liverpool/Evolution/bigBig merger)! :/

 

Sony Worldwide Studios

  • SCE Japan Studio (includes Team Ico, Team Saru, Team Siren, Team Loco)
  • SCE Cambridge Studio (formerly Millennium Interactive)
  • SCE Liverpool Studio (formerly Psygnosis, now includes Evolution Studio and bigBig Studios)
  • SCE London Studio (includes Team Soho)
  • SCE San Diego Studio (formerly 989 Studios)
  • SCE Santa Monica Studio
  • Sony Bend (formerly Eidetic)
  • Sony Online Entertainment (includes studios in San Diego, Austin, Denver and Seattle)
  • Guerilla Games
  • Media Molecule
  • Naughty Dog Software
  • Polyphony Digital
  • Zipper Interactive
Nintendo
  • Nintendo EAD (Entertainment Analysis and Development, includes EAD Tokyo, formerly Nintendo R&D4) 
  • Nintendo SPD (Software Planning and Development, formerly Nintendo R&D1)
  • Nintendo SDD (Software Design and Development)
  • Nintendo NSD (Network Service Development)
  • Nintendo Software Technology
  • Brownie Brown
  • Creatures Inc. (formerly Ape)
  • Genius Sonority
  • HAL Laboratory
  • Intelligent Systems
  • Monolith Soft
  • NdCube
  • Project Sora
  • Retro Studios
Microsoft Game Studios

  • 343 Industries 
  • Big Park
  • Firebird Studios
  • Good Science Studio
  • Lionhead Studios
  • RARE
  • Spawnpoint Studios
  • Turn 10 Studios
  • Xbox Live Productions