Neither studio has been "elite" since the Wii days really.

As I've said.... Retro is incredible talented and they did an amazing job with Metroid prime. But: People always act like Retro did wonders on Metroid and they completely changed the Metroid series. Yes Nintendo failed to figure out how to translate Metroid into 3D and Retro managed to do it. However, at the end it is just Metroid in 3D..... Don't get me wrong I love the Metroid prime trilogy.

I think you're lowballing how hard it is to translate a 2D series successfully to 3D; tons of franchises fumbled the transition and became worse rather than better with the addition of a third dimension.

Maybe you're right haha. But still my point was that they didn't have to create a new game or IP ground up. They had already something they could build upon. I really didn't mean to discredit Retro's work, since they did  fantastic job... Either way, both are great studios, are very talented, but they are just also very different in terms of their game approach

Cough *sonic* Cough

They STILL haven't really figured it out, as good as the adventure games were.

Also kirby is another example, they just decided to NOT go 3d at all by going to portables untill the resurgence of 2d on home consoles.

2020 edition.

Well given that one studio actually releases games and the other can't finish a game to save their lives ... I'd say yes.

If Retro wasn't 100% owned by Nintendo I think they may have been dumped about 2 years ago.

I'm just waiting for Retro, having gone 6 years without a new game, to be like *BOOM* and drop threw new games in one year. Until that day, Monolith Soft has been far more impressive.

Monolithsoft is headed by one of the most celebrated video game designers in history,
* Tetsuya Takahashi, known for his work on Final Fantasy 6 (His wife, Soraya Saga created Edgar and Sabin, and wrote a good deal of FF6's story, while Tetsuya Takahashi's most notable contribution to the game is fleshing out the magitek armour component and directing the opening sequence - which, at the time, was the greatest opening of a game, ever), the graphics director for Chrono Trigger, creator of Xenogears, creator of Xenosaga, and creator Xenoblade.
* Yasuyuki Honne is the co-founder, got his start working under Tetsuya Takahashi on Chrono Trigger alongside Tetsuya Nomura.
Via Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X they revolutionized open world 3D gaming forging the path to Breath of the Wild the greatest game of this generation, a game which most of the studio worked on, and are currently working on its sequel.
* They work with legendary composers, like Yasunori Mitsuda (Takahashi has worked with Mitsuda for the entirety of Mitsuda's career, beginning with Chrono Trigger) and Yoko Shimomura.


Who does Retro Studios even have onboard? I honestly can't think of anyone of note.
What have they really done? Apart from a couple of Donkey Kong throw back titles, the only notable thing Retro Studios has ever done is co-develop Metroid Prime with EAD like 20 years ago; and lets be real, it's not as good as its review scores - they were only that high because of the license.

Retro Studios never was an elite studio and were never as good as Monolithsoft.

Yes, mostly because the last big project Retro completed was in 2014.