I slightly prefer Monolith because I love JRPGs and I love their approach at the moment.

In terms of quality, they're both pretty great companies. Nintendo are great at finding the right groups.

Nah. Monolith's games have been good, but Prime was truly amazing. Xenoblade was great, and X is (so far) ambitious but flawed.

So far Retro is still ahead. We'll see what each company does with their next game.

Btw don't sleep on Intelligent Systems. Nothing quite as grand as Xenoblade or Prime, but they have a crazy high output including mostly good games, and a few great ones. Definitely a contender. Next Level games is one to watch. They've put out some meh stuff with other companies, but they did a great job with Punch Out!!! and Luigi's Mansion. People hated Federation from the second it was released, but it may be a good game in its own right.

Yes this gen and by a long shoot. Xenoblade X is one of the must haves of the Wii U while Retro's game is a dissapointing unambitious project that looks like from a gen before compared to X. Right now people is more excited to know about the next Monolith project than Retro, as Monolith has proved that they can puso the hardware rather than playing safe.

Right now there's zero hype for Retro, unlike at the start of the gen.

Just gotta said same thing about it

You and Monolith Soft've got my vote

I don't think anything that Monolith has made can beat the original Metroid Prime but since the question is about whether Monolith has surpassed Retro and the fact that Metroid Prime is now 13 years old, I think the answer may be "yes." I'm afraid that Retro may no longer be capable of making a Metroid Prime quality game anymore and that's why they are being given less ambitious projects (in my judgment, a 2D DKCR is less ambitious than a 3D Metroid). Also, it's well known that a lot of the talent that made Metroid Prime is now working on Halo at 343 studios.

Now it's possible that Retro has been able to replace this talent but that remains to be seen until we see them work on a project that really pushes the envelope the way Prime did. Tropical Freeze may be a good game, but it's not new territory for Retro Studios and it isn't something that would win them the title of being Nintendo's AAA studio, in my opinion.

Bit of a bold statement, and one I'm not entirely sure how you can make. Care to back that up?

As for the OP, I think it might be worth waiting for Monolith to make more than two good games for Nintendo systems before we declare it as anything.

You've never played the Baten Kaitos series? You should do that.

Yeah, Tropical Freeze damaged Retro's reputation considerably.

In 2011-2013 there was intense hype about what Retro could deliver on HD-capable hardware. There is far less excitement now for what they'll do on NX, because last time the hype train ended in crushing disappointment.

I said good games ;)

In all seriousness, I was more referring to critical reception. If memory serves, the Baten Kaitos games got fairly mixed reviews, so I'm not considering them here. Perhaps a somewhat arbitrary approach to considering contributions, but meh.

I...seriously doubt Tropical Freeze damaged their reputation considerably. I'd argue there's less excitement about what they'll do on NX than, say, 2011-2013, but that was because Nintendo was consistently teasing everyone with "Retro's working on a secret project" for basically two straight years. Retro's gone (mostly) quiet with no real details for what they're working on, so of course there's less excitement.