My thoughts? I think it depends on the track record, or lack thereof of the game developer. The utmost pinnacle of 3rd party game developers, Blizzard, is allowed to take 2 to 6 years to develop games because every game they have created since Warcraft 2 has been golden in both sales and reviews. Rockstar which is a notch below Blizzard seems to develop their games in a shorter span to just as much acclaim. I would put Bioware in the same bleeding edge category with Blizzard and Rockstar.
As for studios like Treyarch, Infinity Ward, and below, they are at the mercy of the publisher. The Call of Duty series is kind of a fluke because it was basically dead until Modern Warfare and then when Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 came out, Activision Blizzard has insisted on a yearly Call of Duty title. I assume this is more or less to take the heat off of Mike Morhaime and Blizzard to release a title in less than 3 years.
It would be mighty interesting to see if Rare would get treated with the same status as a Blizzard or Rockstar if they wanted to get back to the basics of which made them great in the 1990s.
