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zero129 on 02 November 2022
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Doctor_MG said:
Ryuu96 said:

The Initiative always planned on co-developing Perfect Dark in this manner, that was verified by multiple insiders. I'm not sure why people panic so much about news like this, it's hugely common in the gaming industry for studios to either partner or work with multiple studios, almost every single AAA nowadays is created by multiple studios.

Nobody does anything alone nowadays in AAA development. The scale for The Initiative/Crystal Dynamics is a little larger but there's multiple examples of that, World's Edge and Relic on Age of Empires IV, The Coalition and Splash Damage on Gears of War 4/5. How multiple Ubisoft studios work on each Assassin's Creed at the same time, CoD is the same, Nintendo EPD and Monolith, etc.

If it wasn't Crystal Dynamics, then The Initiative would have hired multiple other studios to assist on development because that's how game development is. Crystal Dynamics won't be the only ones assisting on Perfect Dark either because again, that's game development.

Everwild is a bit messy, it was definitely revealed too early, before they even had an idea of what the game would be, then they lost their Creative Director and soon after rebooted it. It happens, I don't really think people understand how volatile game development is for AAA, if everything was revealed as early as some projects, we'd be hearing about reboots nonstop.

It took Guerrilla Games 7 years to make Horizon Zero Dawn.

Why credit Playground Games for the work they do on ForzaTech but not the work that Turn 10 does for ForzaTech which in turn helps Forza Horizon? Turn 10 assists Playground on Forza Horizon and heck according to Linkedin they're assisting them on Fable too because Fable reportedly is using ForzaTech as well. It's not a new engine, no, but it is being heavily revamped for both Forza's sim side and now an Open World RPG.

Yeah, I don't think Compulsion's next title is AAA, I think it'll be upper on the AA scale but you're ignoring some factors, to start with, Compulsion Games is a ~80 employee studio and secondly, We Happy Few had multiple story expansions released for it, the latest being November 2019. Undead Labs is definitely moving into AAA development for State of Decay 3, and they do have multiple studios now, they're expanding, which is a good thing, but UL is still ~130 employees.

It's not solely down to the pandemic but it's foolish to pretend it didn't play a huge part in restricting development schedules and restricting the ability for some of these studios to grow quicker, not to mention, Sony delayed multiple projects during the pandemic, it's just that Sony had a far better pipeline than Microsoft which meant they can take the delays easier, and Sony didn't have to basically restart their development starting 2018.

The Initiative/Playground are both building from the ground up for AAA development so it's likely that they're going to take even longer than even the traditional AAA development schedules, as I pointed out, Horizon Zero Dawk took 7 years to make and that was with an already established studio and not during a pandemic but that's fine because games take time.

There is a lot of outsourcing with AAA game development, but not codevelopment. Don't conflate the two. Developers help projects, but are not assigned to the project in the same way the lead development studio is. For example, 343 is credited as the development studio for Halo Infinite despite outsourcing content from The Coalition and other development studios.

It wasnt 7 years to create Horizon Zero Dawn, it was less than 6,  meanwhile the studio still had a a major release in that period because most studios take on multiple projects at once. This is in addition to creating a new engine. Turn 10 will have released Forza with an updated engine (not a new one) with no major releases in that period. Let's not forget that Horizon is also a new IP in an open world whereas Forza is an existing IP in a very linear one.  

I didn't just credit playground games. I said they are building off some of that work. Which means they aren't using a completely brand new engine or a very old engine that is completely outdated. Turn 10 gets credit for what they do, but PG should get credit for what they have done. 

MS recently laid off 1000 workers, which is the second time this year they've had major layoffs. Some of these workers are from their Xbox division. They reported record breaking revenue in this time period. MS has the capability to support these developers with more staffing. They don't. 

I didn't pretend the pandemic didn't have any impact. I said it's not JUST the pandemic. Other publishers are still able to put out multiple AAA games in this time period. It's an excuse for having a slow year. It's not an excuse for not having a single AAA game releases in a year timeframe. 

We can also look at other development studios, such as 343, that are horribly mismanaged. A six year wait for Halo Infinite, delayed multiple times, while creating an engine and they still didn't deliver much of what they promised (e.g. coop) and, technically, it is not a good engine. Or, at least, it isn't good for infinite given the huge technical issues it has. 

As I said before, development studios often take on multiple projects. Just like Guerilla did with Zero Dawn and Shadowfall. These studios also arent creating new engines like Naughty Dog, Guerilla, or Sony Santa Monica. PG is using ForzaTech for Fable and the Coalition is using Unreal 5. Yes it takes a while to make games, but MS has had 13+ studios for over 4 years with nothing to show for it this year. 

How long did it take from the last GT to the new one?, nevermind that the new one doesnt even look that good and is no longer the top sim racing game like it once was with nothing but MTX in it. Turn 10 is a racing studio they can take their time developing the next forza motorsport game as they have playground who released Horizon. You seem to be very selective in what your nitpicking at here. As a writer on VGC i hope you dont let that same kind of biased ways come into your reviews as if you do i hope you never get to write a review for any MS game.