| HappySqurriel said: If you also look at Sony's efforts the results are pretty mixed, both in terms of quality and sales ... Ultimately, what I think works best is developers that have independence with guidance and support. When a game is not ready to be released because it has some design and technical issues, a publisher that can give you access to an experience high quality designer and some strong technical support while extending the development time to accomodate necessary changes. Games like Lair could have been far more successful games that eventually became valued IPs had the developer been given 6 to 12 months to fix them; but they were released to poor reviews and low sales, and the developers ended up nearly bankrupt. |
I think the extra guidance and support may be more expected in the case of a less experienced developer. Factor 5 were an established developer at the time, they had been developing games over 20 years across 9 different systems. Sony was funding 2 projects in development by them for the PS3 and one more than likely had to be ready by the holiday season of 2007. Factor 5 were also confident in their game prior to release and Sony appeared, if you look at some of the interviews from 2007, to be giving the developer complete creative freedom.
I'm not sure if in that situation Sony should have stepped in and brought in more help. Or if Factor 5's enthusiasm and confidence they were showing publicly had rubbed off on them. Especially with the timing, near the start of the generation, Sony probably had most of it's resources wrapped up in other projects. It's also hard to say with confidence if an extra 6 months would have really helped Lair all that much.
Either way, I'm not sure if the publisher in that instance was truly at fault. They funded a project by a proven developer and allowed them to create something rather unique for the market. Factor 5 just went ahead with a control scheme they loved, but reviewers and gamers didn't. (They also had a lot of play testers, which I'll never understand.)
