It's not easy to make a gazillion sales open world game. Rockstar put effort to make sure every new open world game is bigger and has more features than the previous installment. No wonder no open world SP game has the sales a GTA has. With rare exceptions like CD Project games which are also taking their time in order to deliver a robust open world game.

Linear games are much easier to make.

Ok so now we’re using logic. My whole point was that you reduced ND’s output to a simple “they made 2 games this gen rather than 4” when their games have had way more content this gen the ones from last gen.

Then we come to R* who’ve made only one game this gen compared to 3 last gen and now you see the problem with your own flawed statement, or do you?

Not to mention Rockstar isn’t just one studio they have dev teams all over the place. Mainly GTA games are made by R* North and RDR is made by R* San Diego. GTA guys haven’t made a game this gen at all, they’ve been milking the GTA online cow.

That’s not really true. Lost Legacy is just as big a game as Uncharted 1. Uncharted 4 was a good 50% bigger than Uncharted 2 and 3. Now The Last of Us is said to be 25-30 hours long. They’re just making much bigger games than they did last gen.

Their output hasn’t been affected as badly as most other devs like Rockstar, BioWare, Rocksteady, etc.

mostly I think it comes down to Sony no longer being interested in putting sequels that exist just to exist. They want a sequel to be leap and not just more of the same with minor improvements. It’s working great for them so far they already have two most awarded games this gen with Death Stranding and Last of Us looking very likely to be the games to beat for these last two years of the gen.