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src on 21 December 2021
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shikamaru317 said:
src said:

Insomniac have 2-3 (RC, Spiderman, VR), ND has at least 2-3 (TLOUIII, TLOU Factions, New IP), SSM has 2 (Cory new IP, GOW), GG has 2 (MP game, Horizon), your info is outdated. Housemarque, Media Molecule, London Studio, Firesprite (has 2-3), Polyphony Digital, VASG (rumoured).

Like I said, the strength of output is more important.  A few of Sony's IPs are so strong now they outsell half of MS's catalogue. Playstation sells 60M 1st party games in 1 year. Over this generation they have sold 250M+ games.

At this point MS is playing massive catchup and despite buying a lot of studios they haven't found big hitters. Without Bethesda they would have perhaps 1: Forza Horizon. Halo has declined so massively it sells 5 million now, Gears is even lower. ES and Fallout are really all they have in terms of 20M sellers and they take like 5 years to come out with one game. We're going to get 3-4 Spiderman games before 1 Elder Scrolls game.

I'm not sure I would call Insomniac's VR team AAA, but maybe they are. Last I heard Neil Druckmann was still deciding rather he wanted to do a new IP next or TLOU 3, did he ultimately decide on TLOU 3? I must have missed that. Either way, I thought the his Last of Us team was finishing up TLOU Factions Multiplayer before moving on to their next AAA singleplayer project, but maybe you're right and it's 2 entirely separate teams. You may be right about SSM, I remember they cancelled a new IP last gen, which was why Stig Asmussen (director of GoW 3) quit SSM and ended up directing Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order at Respawn, and I was rather annoyed by that new IP cancellation as the leaks about it sounded interesting, so it would be cool to see SSM working on something new again. Housemarque is definitely AA last I checked, unless they are planning to expand to AAA before their next-game, I believe they only have about 80 devs currently. I was debating rather or not to classify Media Molecule as AA or AAA, their production values clearly aren't on the same level as some of Sony's other studios, so I ultimately decided to keep them off my list, but they may actually be AAA. London Studio makes somewhat lower budget VR games last I checked, no AAA unless something has changed. I thought I read that Firesprite was going to be a support studio for Sony rather than making their own games, but if you're right and they are going to make their own games and have 2-3 teams, that was a very good grab for Sony. I definitely forgot Polyphony on my list, my bad on that. Isn't VASG a support studio and that AI machine learning tech is going to be used across all Sony studios?

I don't think there has been any single year where Sony sold 60m 1st party games, that seems outrageous honestly. Rumor about a year ago was that Uncharted 4, TLOU 1, God of War (2018), Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Spider-Man were all at around 20m lifetime or more, but those sales were all spread out over several years, even in 2018 where they would have had the launches of Spider-Man and God of War as well as Horizon residual legs from the previous year, it seems like it would have been difficult to move 60m 1st party games in 1 year.

Halo is alot more than 5m, Halo 5 sold 5m in just the first 3 months, and according to an industry analyst, Microsoft reps told him that Halo 5's lifetime sales were comparable to other games in the series. Halo Infinite is of course difficult to compare to earlier games in the franchise due to it's split singleplayer multiplayer, and F2P multiplayer, but based on Amazon chart performance and stuff it seems like even the paid $60 singleplayer is selling very well (currently at #24 on Amazon US for instance, even though like 70% of Xbox software sales are digital these days, plus people who are choosing to play on Gamepass instead of buying the campaign). And the multiplayer has been hugely successful so far, I wouldn't be surprised if MS soon announces that Halo Infinite singleplayer + MP is over 10m players already, much like Forza Horizon 5. I would say that that Forza Horizon, Halo, Fallout, Starfield, and Elder Scrolls all have 20m+ players potential for Xbox including Gamepass players, and some of those may even pass 30m players, for instance Skyrim did over 30m on sales, so I see no reason why the next Elder Scrolls can't do more than 30m on players including Gamepass, and Forza Horizon 4 was at 24m players a year ago and is rumored to be close to 30m players now. And like I said, some other Xbox IP's could grow in popularity this gen, much like we saw Sony IP's grow in popularity this past gen, maybe something else can surpass 20m players this gen, the rumored Zenimax Online Star Wars game perhaps. I don't see Spider-Man getting 3-4 games before Elder Scrolls 6 is likely to launch in 2025 or 2026, unless you are including Spider-Man 1 and Miles Morales in that count, meaning you are referring to all Spider-Man games released between Skyrim (2011) and TES 6 (2025-2026), which while accurate, discounts the fact that Bethesda now has 3 IP's they will be rotating between unless MS/Bethesda decide to move each of the 3 behind separate Bethesda studios, which may happen.

  • In the VR space, Insomniac is definitely AAA. Same with London Studio. Only title with more production is Half Life Alyx.
  • TLOU III is most likely going to be directed by Kurt or two ND directors like Lost Legacy.
  • TLOU Factions is an entirely separate team, led by the people who made it in TLOU I. The MP lead has been getting feedback from fans on twitter. It went from being part of a game to its own series now.
  • Returnal is AAA. Its made by over 1000 people and has the production of AAA standards (mo cap, graphics, sound etc)
  • Firesprite has over 265 dev and are working on 3 AAA titles.
  • VASG was on TLOU remake which got moved or is being shared now.
  • There's also rumours of a new San Diego studio making Uncharted but I haven't seen much concrete info on it.

  • 54M in 18, 49M in 19, 58M in 20. Things have changed. Playstation is now one of the biggest software pubs in the world, up there with EA, Ubisoft, T2. Only 2nd to Nintendo, the number 1 in the world with 100M+ games sold yearly. I told you, Xbox has long to go to catch up.
  • Completely wrong. First it was a forum post, and it was shipped not sold. Sell through figures that Halo 5 at 2.5-3 million in US+UK which is around 66% of Xbox's market. Halo used to sell 3M in 1 week in the US alone. A monumental decline.
  • Player numbers are meaningless unless active users per day,week or month are given consistently. A F2P title makes money by its active userbase. MS does not give these numbers but we have the XBL charts. Steam gives us all the numbers. We can see Halo Infinite has decline 70% since its release in less than a month in active userbase.
  • SM (2018), SM:MM (2020), SM2 (2023), SM2:spinoff (2025). 4 games in 8 years, or 3 games in 6 years. Mainline SM games sell >20M. MM is at 6.5M in half a year or so. LTD should be around 12M. That's 65M in sales while 1 Skyrim game takes 5-6 years and sells 20M (no Playstation this time).