As a writer, I'm still allowed my own opinions about the output of publishers. I'm also not making any grand claims about the quality of titles. I'm sorry if you think I'm biased. I assure you I try to remain as impartial as someone can be when reviewing a game. 

Anyway, the point about Turn 10 doesn't change my opinion because my opinion doesn't hinge on that studio in particular, but the wealth of studios MS has and their lack of output this year. In addition, I already said I don't think that Polyphony is a particularly great studio. I think Playground Games is better, tbh. 

Oh, also I was wrong about the date for GT7. It came out this year, not last year. That shows you how attentive I am to Gran Turismo lol

You should never be impartial when reviewing a game. It's your job to give your opinion while also being transparent with where that opinion comes from. Reviews are subjective, they can't possibly be objective unless you're like Digital Foundry or something calculating frame rates and resolution and bump mapping pixel shader numbers or whatever. Every review comes from a place of...

...why am I telling you this? You know. You're just also trying to be civil. I respect that. 

Well I really just mean I don't make up my mind about a game because of it's brand, platform or budget until I've played it. I may adjust my expectations accordingly (e.g. graphics for indie vs AAA or Switch vs PS5), but I don't pick up, say, Mario Strikers and say "oh this is going to be a 5.5 because I don't like Nintendo". 

Impartiality isn't quite objectivity. But, overall, yeah it's not an exact science lol. 

With Pentiment showing up four days ago it was definitely not their worst year ever.

This is honestly a bullshit justification.

While what you are saying is 100% true.. games take time to make... that doesn't change the fact that this is at the very least showing a gross lack of foresight on MSpart.They are a platform holder and publisher. While games take time to make, their development is also planned and initiated years before their expected releases. If you look at the output of MS FP software over the last 6 years, their real problem becomes clear to see.

Its why it was just easier to buy up studios that already had projects either pending or in development.

Lets t pretend that we aren't living in the same world where Playstation and Nintendo exist. Just look at sony's output this year, last year, and even the year before that. Or the one before that...etc.

Dreadful year, and pentinent isn't a must have title. Grounded is probably the only game i'd say is worth playing

Late to the party. But can somebody explain why a studio getting bigger would slow development? That does not make sense.

Its suposed to be comon knowledge that studios are always working on something and bigger studios work on multiple projects at one. If a studio got bigger sounds logical that whatever project was being worked on would now be done faster with the extra manpower.

Unless im to assume that phil came in and said this studio is now 2x bigger. Scrap everything you had and start from scratch. Or those studios whete just sitting on their asses for years waiting to the team to grow. Either is just poor management on MS part.

Apparently nobody played the games these studios released in the time AFTER they were purchased lol, and the positive impact the studio purchase had on the outcome of the games, but, no one’s ever going to pay attention to the important details outside of their own bias

Damn shame too. Wasteland 3 by inXile in 2020 and the 2 expansions released in 2021 were literally one of the best true RPG’s I’ve played in idk how many years. 

Did anybody say that? The thing is that some of these studios have moved to AAA production whilst still being ~100 employees so they've had to staff up significantly to become a AAA capable.

InXile for example, their next title is AAA, but they were a ~100 sized studio, as a result they've staffed up over the years and moved into a much larger studio to accommodate that. So, it's not that anyone is saying "a studio getting bigger would slow development" it's that people are saying "AA-sized studios are moving into AAA production so they need time to staff up"

Undead Labs too, State of Decay 3 is being described as AAA and they were a ~100 employee studio, since then they've opened two more studios and started expanding, whilst supporting State of Decay 2 (even today) with content updates.

And in someone like Playground's case, instead of using the Forza Horizon team for Fable, they opened a brand-new studio and started to staff it up from 1 employee to a target of ~250 so that would explain why that is taking longer too.

So my question still stands. What are the current devs doing during this increase or move to new place or creating a separate team? Because the worst part is these teams even with the excuses you are making still had the ability to show what they are working on. So some work had to have been done for them to show off a game like they did with perfect dark or fable or stay of decay. So they canot have been doing nothing. Or they had nothing but still decided to show off? Wich is also not good.