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curl-6 on 25 January 2019
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AngryLittleAlchemist said:
curl-6 said:

Back in the 6th gen they had a ton of projects that stalled and got canned; Thunder Rally, Retro Football, Raven Blade, an unnamed action adventure title. They pulled themselves together and did well from Prime 2 to Tropical Freeze, but since then we've seen them yet again fall into many years of not only having nothing to show for themselves but according to rumor also having projects go off the rails. Then there was the incident last year where a couple of ex-employees alleged that behind closed doors the studio had become a circus, with poor management preventing anything getting done.

They're just not a studio I have any confidence in.

That's honestly a stretch at best. Those early 2000's projects you listed were all in the conceptual or early production phases, they were by no means games that were well into development or titles that had exhausted tons of resources. Many companies, including Nintendo, have cancelled projects at the conceptual or early stages of production, it doesn't mean a company is any less or more reliable as long as they aren't doing that for years. It's a pretty normal procedure in the gaming industry. 

So really, the point about their track record is pretty null and void. Being silent for a few years is not something which has been consistently replicated by Retro, so them being a studio which is consistently stuck in development hell isn't true. In fact, in order to even come to that conclusion, you first have to make the assumption that A ) They weren't working on multiple games and B ) that they weren't working on a singular project which, compared to their staff numbers and resources, was difficult to produce in the manner of only a few years. And all of this is also assuming they don't have a title coming out in the near future, for all we know they could be nearly done with their next game. 

So yeah, there's not really any evidence supporting this notion that Retro has a "track record" of development hell. They don't. 

That being said, being skeptical about Retro is understandable. Really, Retro having this game is no more or less reassuring to me than other studios creating the title. Because studios are more than just a brand name, they have a lot of baggage on top of that (like staff numbers, staff experience, resources, artistic direction, etc.). So i'm not particularly excited for Retro either, I'm just not negative towards it.

The fact they've gone more than 5 years without having anything to show for it is in itself proof that they're failing to manage development well. Well run studios who have things under control simply don't go dark for so long. Add to that the rumors of projects stuck in limbo (which historically has happened with Retro before) and the allegations from ex-employees and I simply don't see any reason to have faith in Retro's abilities any more.