I almost forgot how productive Insomniac was in the PS3 generation, probabaly coz Naughty Dog back then mixed good output with some very high production values, quality, and popularity that overshadowed Insomniac.

More recently, Insomniac's production values rival some of the best in the industry, and they're responsible for Sony's current biggest published and developed series. I wouldn't say they're more (or less) productive than PS3 era ND when you factor in the number of employees and the scale of their projects. It's not exactly a like for like but both of them impressed me. Current ND does not impress.

In my opinion... FromSoftware and Insomniac are the current kings of production. FromSoft doesn't have the best visuals or technical strengths, but the depth of their games is mad impressive without requiring the long development times you expect from say a Zelda game (let alone a hypothetical PS5 level Zelda game).

Monolith seem very productive too. Granted it's easier to put out higher quantities of games when production values are lower. Ultimately, "productive" and "efficient" are ill-defined term that combines multiple elements.

Capcom is probably up there too, but they're harder to measure with all the different divisions. I don't follow which division is doing what.

I agree that ND has to start getting things going. I'm still not sour on them this gen so far because I think with a remaster an remake under their belt, their team will now be able to push the PS5 more readily. But only time will tell.

But you bring up a good point about the productivity of other teams, and I think it's important for Sony to get more studios like this. From, Monolith and Capcom definitiely are pushing out great games on a consistent basis.

I sort of expected FireSprite to be the EU alternative to Insomniac since they seemed, at one point, to have like 3 projects in production.  They had the Persistence update in 2021, and then Horizon VR this year. Hopefully they have the rumoured Twisted Metal for 2024 with something else in 2025. But of course , since they're also working on the Star Citizen MP mode, they aren't at full manpower for Sony yet. 

Sometimes these guys feel like they can just do whatever they want and get away with it. I always thought 2014 was pretty egregious with all the remasters

I think there is a bit of a misnomer that development only happens on one title at a time... Which simply isn't true.

A developer will have multiple projects in the pipeline.

For example... When Insomiac started developing Spider-Man, the writers would have already finished their work and would have been writing the stories for Ratchet and Clank... And then would have gone onto Spider-Man 2.

They wouldn't have waited around for development to finish on the first Spider-Man... That's just a waste of time and money.

Same goes for engine architects (Sound, Visual, Technical etc'), concept artists, director, lead designer, lead programmer, and lead artist and more... They won't stay on one project start to finish, they will start the ball rolling on the next project before the first one finishes.

Yeah it has been a terrible year for sony's first party releases. This is generally when they should be starting to release more games not less.

We can say it is weaker than average, but you would find plenty of weaker years. Let's just remember that before PS3 years the only 1st party game that sold more than 10M for Sony was Gran Turismo, it is just that since most games were either exclusive or sold much more on PS on the first 2 gens people forget how weak Sony 1st party were.

Considering that when they moved from the "diversity" on PS3 (10 games launched, 6 lose money, 2 break even, 2 pay for everything else) their biggest sales were below 10M and the HW was at it lowest sales point, but on PS4 with less diversity almost all games are profitable with majority crossing 10M sales (some reaching 20-25M) and HW growing for 2 gens I don't think they are really losing.

At one point they actually had 4 games in production. Horizon VR, rumored Twisted Metal (Multiplayer Action), some kind of "Action Shooter", and they also have some kind of "horror narrative game".  

They cancelled the action shooter many months back, even before Deviation Games.

Horizon VR obviously finished. I haven't seen any indication of something new. I'm not sure if these people got folded into one of the other teams.

As it stands, it really only seems like they have two projects. One seems to be Twisted Metal, and the other is a horror narrative game (whatever that entails).

Firesprite appears to be done with Star Citizen:

This was last year:

The public timeline that CIG publishes, shows that Firesprite finished its work in March.  

I'm still hopeful that some of the studios will get their ducks in a row. 

I think there are some tricky dynamics. If you finish a game, and then start a new game every year for 6 years, you won't release a single game for 6 years, and then after that you'll start releasing a game every year. So there's a very lengthy transition time; and I get the impression that some of the studios are working in the middle of that transition. I'm hopeful that in like 3 or so years, they'll be pushing out games at a better rate.