S-E apparently fared well on the handhelds this generation, basically refused to make Wii games and having all sorts of trouble to finish games on the HD consoles. Makes it look like the development process is different on certain platforms.

For a better comparison we shouldn't just pick random studios and pit them against each other, but rather compare the work of the same team in this generation and the last one. To mention S-E once again, they could pull off a vast world on the PS2 with FF XII, but deliberately decided against such an approach with FF XIII on the PS3. Furthermore, my argument wasn't that it isn't possible to create good looking HD games on a small budget. It was that the scope of games like XC can't be realized in a reasonable amount of time while maintaining consistence between the individual areas of the game.

Also, especially during the beginning of this generation people complained that a lot of games got shorter than they were last generation. Well, why do you think did that happen?

Presentation Movie
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/conference2011/presentation/index.html

3DS Software Lineup
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/conference2011/titlelist/index.html

Well, the R&C games launched every year on the PS2 after the series' introduction (four in total from 2002 to 2005) and on the PS3 we have a two years gap between each title (third game coming this fall, the other two games were launched in 2007 and 2009). So there you go. It's not like Insomniac suddenly got significantly less efficient at producing games, it's just that it takes more time to make a AAA PS3 game than a AAA PS2 game.

Insomniac is a company that constantly grows their development staff, by now they have about 200 people working across two studios. They grew in manpower, but the number of releases remained flat all these years.

I think during the PS1 and PS2 days they really only had one development team that could pump out yearly sequels once the engine was in place and since the PS3 era started they have actually had separate teams for different franchises working two years on each game. Also, besides Resistance 3 and R&C: All 4 One they already have another game in the works that will be multiplatform for the first time in their history (Overstrike or something).

Seems about right. I couldn't find anything else either and these numbers aren't sufficient to make an absolute statement about their entire company history, although I do think that I got the right idea. Since the development of Resistance was already well underway in mid-2005 we don't have any real pre-PS3 numbers, but what we have still shows that their workforce increased while their output remained the same.

For a better comparison we shouldn't just pick random studios and pit them against each other, but rather compare the work of the same team in this generation and the last one. To mention S-E once again, they could pull off a vast world on the PS2 with FF XII, but deliberately decided against such an approach with FF XIII on the PS3.

I hope this validates my Skyward Sword thread from not too long ago in which I criticized the length of Nintendo's development cycle for the latest Zelda game. Although it needs to be noted that Insomniac usually only makes minimal changes in their sequels, but they definitely are one of the best organized and run companies in the industry.