Has Monolith surpassed Retro Studio as new Nintendo elite studio?

[Pavolink]

MTZehvor said:

Pavolink said:

MTZehvor said:

Couple things.

Firstly, up until a recent hiring spree in mid-2014, Retro was roughly half the size of Monolith Soft; a comparison between the two in terms of total output is entirely unfair. They're still 25% smaller and are still restricted to one development studio, whereas Monolith has two (one in Tokyo and one in Kyoto).

Secondly, very minor note, but if you're including re-releases in your comparison, Retro also developed DKCR 3D.

Then, let's split into 2.

Monolith still developed 4.5 games, more than those 3 that Retro did, with one of them being Xenoblade X and a port of a massive game like Xenoblade. Retro does not have anything to win this comparision.

Keep in mind that the "co-developments" mentioned require significantly less people than does developing an entire game. Monolith has the people to develop a game on its own (like X), and assist with several other Nintendo projects. Retro did (and likely still does) not.

To put this into example form, imagine you have a studio with roughly 120 people (i.e Monolith's size) and 60 or so people (Retro's size pre 2014). Let's say, for the sake of argument (I'm sure it would differ from game to game), that you need 55 people to develop a game, and 5 people to assist with the development of a game already in progress. Retro, in this case, can develop one game and assist with one game. Monolith, meanwhile, can develop one game, and assist with 15. If you equate the effort required for assisting with a game to the effort required in order to make a game from scratch, the results will be extremely skewed towards the larger company.

 

Then keep moving the goal post: 1 game vs 1 game. DKCTF vs Xenoblade X. And here there's no excuse. Retro was capable of develop Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2 in a single gen, Metroid Prime 3, MP Trilogy and DKCR on the Wii. They can do a lot better than a simple 2D DK game.