Agree to disagree. Nintendo's development structure is different. The studios/teams responsible for 3D Mario or Zelda get involved in other projects. Like Capcom and Sony's own late Japan Studio, it's hard to get a real sense as to how efficient each team is. Retro Studios is the better comparison. Nintendo fans rarely mention Retro as being Nintendo's best even though they're responsible for Metroid Prime, one of the greatest video games of all time. Because their output is crap and they don't consistently make masterpieces.

PS3 era Naughty Dog made 4 games including 2 generation-defining ones (and arguably Sony's most liked games of all time), which rightly put them among the very top developers of the era. These days they're just not that. The term "generation-defining" is also fairly vague. Insomniac has 3 titles in Playstation's top 20 dollar selling premium games in the US (the oldest of which is a 2018 game) while ND has none. Bloodborne can be viewed as generation defining but then... it didn't sell 10 million, so maybe not? I don't pay much attention to sales in this context, but someone else might. The aforementioned Metroid Prime sold less than 3 million copies yet it feels like a crime to not view it as generation-defining, given the overwhelmingly positive reception from those who played it.

It can be argued that the only time ND made generation-defining games is the PS3 era. PS1 Crash games were big sellers but weren't as respected as MGS, FF7, and several other PS1 and gen 5 games. Overall I do consider original Crash trilogy as generation-defining (because it was an icon. Then again Pokemon also is an icon and it's currently shit lol). Jak series was great and I loved it, but not generation-defining by any stretch of the imagination.

I understand where you're coming from though. Naughty Dog at its best is on a different level from Insomniac at its best (so far). But productivity is an objective fact that puts Insomniac well ahead of current ND. Insomniac has grown so much over the last decade whereas ND declined and disappointed.

Ripto's Rage >>> any Crash that isn't CTR by the way :P

The Last of Us Part 1 counts because it's a remake not just a remaster lol, I know, I know it's "more The Last of Us" but the game was worked by the newest ND employees (baptism by fire basically) and Shawn Escayg was the creative director, he also was the codirector of Lost Legacy and now is the director of their current second game in development so there was a lot of future value in the development of that remake. It's true they made a bad time investment with their little service adventure tho and unless that second game is a remake of Uncharted 1 I don't think it will be a PS5 game, maybe a crossgen game.  

Insomniac on the other hand is a well oiled machine, even with the gap between Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine the median of years between releases since the PS4 is 1.5 years. If they release something in 2027 and there is a chance they could their median would go down to 1 year. Crazy how good they are, every dollar from the acquisition was worth it. 

Totally deserved. I don't really care that much about Metacritic but I know it's important for sales so I'm happy for the team and speaking about sales hopefully those numbers also backup Sucker Punch great work. 

They don't need to coordinate the announcement of a game very far away from release with an anniversary, but if they can as the game is said to come next year, why not?

People have been angry with Sony for many reasons, a lot of stupid reason but a lot of good reasons too.

Marketing is a very important part of the process, being bad on it is an important problem.

Yeah we will agree to disagree.

I do agree with some of your points but I think it's crystal clear a The Last of Us or God of War level game carries by far more weight than any game Insonmiac ever did. Sales are great and the most immediatly important for the company and Spider Man has the same level of TLoU and GoW on that, but as you mentioned Crash as an icon, that holds a special kind of value sales alone (even as they hold massive sales as well) can't ever have.

The brand Playstation is as strong as it is exactly because of these kind of value, first the value of being a place to play pretty much every game out there, then that + been sure than what those high profile studios will pump out will be something to outshine the other many great games out there.

About the number of games decreasing, that is an industry wide problem as already pointed out by every other major franchise releasing games of that caliber. We used to have 3 new Final Fantasy each gen as well, now we have 1 new game and 1 remake and that's it.

I love PS1 Spyro even as I love PS1 Crash more, so I won't hold your last sentence any prejudice lol

In all the years I've been keeping up with Destiny, didn't think it would go this low. Even on the PS Store, which digital storefronts are the only place you can claim the game since any physical releases haven't released in years, it's barely staying in the top 40. Not sure where it is on Xbox.

It's been a Platinum level seller every year on Steam since being brought to the platform. Doesn't look like it'll be reaching that height this year. The small expansion Renegades with the Star Wars theme launches in December, but that's over 2 months away still, and almost looks like a last hurrah. Unless they're trying to get other crossovers to buy the game more time.

And with no plans for another major expansion, looks like a huge chunk of the playerbase has finally had their fill with the game. Renegades will temporarily bring back some players but seeing the game dropping to the likes 8,000 concurrent players at lull times and peaking around 15,000, when I was used to seeing it go to like 40,000 at its absolute lowest times for so long, things aren't exactly looking good for the long term. 

So with Destiny 2 on life support, and Bungie having been gutted as much as they have in recent years, I'm sure they're hoping Marathon is a home run. Because I doubt they have the devpower they used to be working on a Destiny 3 at this time.

You are the Destiny 2 player so I trust in what you are saying and yeah Destiny 2 is pretty much done but I do have a problem with the Forbes guy lol, he is the source of information for most of the bad news about Bungie but it has always been weird to me how these news always come out "at the perfect moment" to generate engage, like when the plagiarism tweet about Marathon happened and then suddenly he knew lots of things about the problems with the development of Marathon. He had months to talk about what was happening but no he did it in the moment something truly bad was happening lol maximizing engagement. It's too much of a coincidence in my opinion. Ironically the game that should not be named was the one that made me realize what that guy was all about. Firs talking shit and shit about the game, Sony kills the game, the studio and then suddenly the guy is sorry for the devs lol. Clearly what he says true or not matters to a lot of people and instead of letting the developers work (not even thinking about Bungie or Sony as organizations) he just puts and puts more pressure over them. Fuck that guy.  

Anyway. It looks like we may end the year without another wave of Bungie lay offs, that at least would be good news. Let's see if Marathon can find that miracle they desperately need. 

Btw, Destiny 2 player count on steam was around 20k (source: The fucking Forbes guy LOL) at the end of last year to then going back to the 40k you talk about but yeah is time to kill that horse. 

LOL yeah that's fair in regard to Tassi's assessments and how timely he tends to be, but in regard to the game itself, it's a natural decline at this point. Last year was the games "Avengers Endgame" moment. A decade of buildup leading to that expansion. After that, what's left their to do with the current game? Some crossovers to buy the game additional time it seems lol. I'll periodically check in on my old clan and out of the little over 200 we had, I'll see about a quarter of them still regularly active in the game over the past several months.

It's honestly surprising that Bungie didn't take that into account, or they did, and leadership just went "nah" at the thought of making a Destiny 3. Which wouldn't surprise me, as that has been a regular reporting of higher ups ignoring developer warnings. If your game is built around it being an MMO-like experience, continuous major content drops are needed to keep the community engaged. 

Hopefully Bungie took the lukewarm reception to heart regarding the Marathon alpha and are working on righting that ship as best they can before it launches.

The dilemma Bungie has found themselves were going to happen with or without Sony buying them. As bad as it sounds, all the savings they've had in laying off so many employees in recent times, is probably keeping them afloat currently while they continue to work on Marathon and Destiny 2 getting smaller content drops to keep the remaining playerbase engaged.

My brother wants to catch up on so many games on the PS5. He's wants to buy the limited edition black or gold "Ghost of Yotei" console.
It will also be available in regular stores, right?

Personally, I like the gold PS5 very much.

PS: Its time for a new Thread-Title, right ? @the-pi-guy

What's sad of all of this is that even if Marathon results to be a good game it's unlikely it will be a success. One of the many things the Forbes guy said when the plagiarism tweet happened was that Bungie established the goal of being top 5 seller of the year to be a success (in Circana charts). Assuming that's true well ... that won't happen in a year with GTA6, Wolverine, chinese games, indie darlings, Nintendo games, and the forever sellers like COD and FIFA so the layoffs are very likely to happen next year. 

You made mention that currently there's no plans for new Destiny 2 content and I hope it stays that way, I think they have to realice that right now whatever money they are making from new Destiny 2 content is doing more harm than good. Constant hate over the product is not only creating bad blood over Marathon but it also could create bad blood over the franchise and its future. Players are done with the game so right now it's a toxic relationship. The best move here for me would be just to end it and go low in the time they develop Destiny 3, give the players time to rest and with some luck even time to miss it. 

Destiny is a huge asset, when it comes to PlayStation franchises Destiny is the most famous in China. Data shows 1/5 of all the people who played Destiny 2 on pc were from China (in their other franchises China represents around 1/10). They can't let go of that, Destiny Rising is even more proof of the franchise popularity in China and how what people want is a new game no more expansions, they have to be very careful with what they are going to do next with Destiny.  

Obviously ending Destiny 2 and going low would mean more layoffs but that's unavoidable at this point. As for the development of Destiny 3, Nixxes and XDEV are helping the development of SAROS so once that's done I would use them to back up what's left of Bungie. 

The worst part of all of this is that now that Bungie is a PS Studio other studios aren't protected from their bs anymore so the layoffs could be from other studios. That is going to piss me off. I may not be interested in Marathon anymore but oh boy I wish them the best of miracles next year so this won't happen.