Mario Galaxy is really different than what Mario usually is so no it hasn't been long since they risk in games either

and changing art stiles in Zelda is also risky

making Kirby feel like pants?

Can't wait to get this behemoth of a game for 20 bucks like 1 month after release.

As well as that Polyphony Digital (Gran Turismo) are at approx. 110 employees, Kojima Productions (Metal Gear Solid) approx. 200 employees. 343 Industries (Halo 4) approx 250 employees.

I would imagine the Square Enix teams working on the main FF games and Rockstar North (GTA) would also have massive teams.

I've loved almost every Mario game I've played except for 2, Paper Mario and Mario RPG. I don't consider making a mario game a risk. Give it the mario feel change the environment if you must but the experimentation will always be done with it. They kind of went back to square one with Mario, but yeah its still cool though. When I say risk as well I mean new IP risk.

Oh well that is quite stupid!

Naughty dog, working on 2 games, before that, they only had 1 team, half of the people.

Guerilla games is working on 3 titles, so..

I dont believe those numbers, this is definately too much

IO interactive also have at least 2 games in developement

all those teams are nothing compared to a Resident evil where 600+ people are working for ONE game

same with Assassins creed 300+

and COD also I dunno the numbers, but must be pretty high

oh I forgot Rockstar

Is this serious? They produce about one AC a year (one every 2 years tops) on top of huge budgets, advertising, and not to mention it's easily the biggest new ip this generation.

You also forgot Kojima Productions and 343, way past 100 working presumably on a single title.

I'm not sure about IO interactive working on two games, It's been 2 years since their last title and Hitman is set for this year. Nothing else has been announced.

Anything over 100 developers I imagine would be considered a big team in terms of industry standards.

As for the Resident Evil numbers, 150 people are working on the title in Japan with over 600 employees around the world involved in the title to some degree. That's completely different to actually having a team of 600 fully involved in the development of a single project, which would likely lead to the project having a completely overblown, astronomical budget.

Assassins Creed III has also had up to 600 people who have worked at one stage or another on various parts of the project. These kind of numbers are unprecedented though, so although they might see themsevles as a dying breed they're still apparently a relatively new breed in comparison to the numbers we've seen publicly shown from other studios.

GTAIV had 150 developers working on it I believe, with perhaps another 100 or so involved in the project. You can see the scale and size of that game for comparison. 

The thing is the smaller numbers tend to be their day to day payroll and then they increase as they need usually through short term contracts and outsourcing or in many cases using other associated  teams, also it can depend on whether your making an exclusive game or making it cross platform but keeping it in house so 600 could easily be split across the different AC3  PS360  WU / PC  teams.

Only personal preference... I think all AC is boring but I like the story and the multiplayer.