The only bad devs I can think of are 989 (well apparently they've improved a lot lately but I wouldn't know) and SCC Cambridge (gameplay), but even Cambridge puts out a 'I guess you could say it's almost decent' (if flawed) game, an outright terrible one (like 24) is the exception to their weak gameplay/design rule. Oh and Team Soho - Getaway Team, Getaway sucks.
I still think that Guerilla is a bad developer. I really don't care about Liberation because both of their
console games sucked and were widely jokes from reviewer to reviewer.
Aside from that though, you have, at worst, competent if totally unspectacular devs, but those aren't the majority of the devs in the SCEWWS. Mainly you have lesser known devs who do excel at offering a good game in their particular area. You don't like Golf or Tennis? Ok fine, but Clap Hanz makes some of the best Gold and Tennis games out there. Maybe you don't like Incog, but Twisted Metal Black? Warhawk? Both very good products. Maybe you don't like Singstar? I know I don't, but it's a very well made product and the latest version, you know the one with the online store etc, it obviously very good at the mission it sets out to accomplish: Being a good Karaoke game and sell millions of copies in Europe.
The problem is, though, that they have a few bad, some mediocre, a few good, and one awesome dev. I'm basing my opinion of their first party on EVERYONE in it. I'm not just ignoring the bad ones to look at the good ones, I'm taking the bad into consideration as well. That being said, Microsoft's first party is much more solid and well-rounded than Sony's. They don't have any outright bad devs. All of them are good at what they do, there's less of them, but they're all talented in their own right.
And I still don't care about a golf game or karoake dev. I find all golf games boring, regardless of how "good" they are.. and karoake anything annoys me. I just don't see them as full-blown assets like I see studios like Sucker Punch, etc. Making a golf game or a karoake game doesn't take technical wizardry or intense amounts of creativity. Mainly because they all follow the same formulaic path. Are they fun for some people? Maybe. But they're not works of art and don't some greater purpose other than cheap entertainment.
Actually I can tell you exactly why GT is so popular: Polish. Love it or hate it Gran Turismo is undeniably the most consistently refined and polished Racer out there, Polyphony accepts nothing less then an extremely high standard for everything they do. People put up with the bouncing off the wall physics of 3 and 4 because the overall game had absurd polish in every aspect in every area of them game. Now even up to the midway point of the last generation things like proper crash physics in a proper racing sim weren't too widely integrated so people didn't miss it. GT4 caught flak for the lack of proper collision, but the driving still got top marks. Rightly so that GT4 should be criticized for those sorts of things, but with GT5 they're going to have Forza style car damage, and visible damage for Racing and Rally Cars as well as Online play. The only other thing that has yet to be seen is if they'll allow you to make your own decals like in Forza 2. But back on topic people love GT because its sense of style, the absurd graphical accomplishments, and the accept no less then the best possible design philosophy that unfortunately held the series back on the PS2 but won't be a problem with something as powerful as the PS3. GT5 already looks absurdly better then Forza, and now it's getting those things that Forza had and past GT games didn't.
GT isn't a bad game, it's a good game. But when I play GT compared to Project Gotham or Forza, I just really don't see the big difference. There's not some major disparity between the three. They're all fun racers, and I guess I just don't really see how GT5 is going to be so much amazingly better than Forza (3?) or PG4.
- Because the Forza Wheel sucks according to fans and because the GT wheel has always been top notch and because GT5 will have rumble, thank god.
The Forza wheel? All I know is that the official Xbox 360 racing wheel that most people have is one of the better wheels out there for racers. I don't really think the wheel has anything to so with the game if you can just get another one that fulfills the same purpose but better.
Crash Bandicoot was well received for its time and sorry but the Jak series hasn't been inconsistent at all in terms of quality. Jak I was a great collectathon game that single ahndedly laid to rest the question of if the DC was more powerful. Jak II was even better then Jak I, it's only Jak III taht suffered considering they amde it in 1 year. Technologically speaking they are certainly one of the industries best devs, and all around, heck even Gabe of Valve says they're almost unrivaled when it comes to technology.
Well, actually, that's half true. Crash Bandicoot received inconsistent reviews. There were some that ranked it all the way down to about 73% and lower 80s, and then there were the few that ranked it in the 90s. People liked the graphics, but complained that controls were sluggish, etc. They're a decent dev from what I've seen, but I don't know if they're exactly "one of the best". At least, I have yet to see that out of them.
Probably one of the better platforming devs, but we have yet to see as an all-around "industry-best" dev.
Thanks for taking the time. Sorry to disappoint you but Shell Shock was their first game and that wasn't the Killzone team. Killzone showed a ton of promise and still has some of the best art direction in an FPS today. To say otherwise means you don't have eyes, granted there were a few ugly levels but the good outweighs the bad in that regard. The fortress of Vekta Beach looks better then any part of Halo 2, Guerillas art direction is that good. That being said it's still a crap game, but Liberation and Killzone 2 stand a chance to change the smear that was the original.
It doesn't matter which team did either. Mainly because both of them were from the same company and both of them, apparently, where huge let-downs in terms of.. mostly everything. The art direction is okay, but the color palette used is boring and really detracts from the game. Not to mention that as much as people say that the Helghast are entirely original.. they
do look too much like a certain anime's antagonist.
And I have yet to see a screenshot from any killzone levels that I thought were "great". Maybe if you can dig up an example of that Vekta beach that would help me a little.
That argument might have worked... if we were talking about the GBA. You're basically saying the accomplishments on handhelds mean less because they're on a less powerful system, Killzone Liberation was excellent because of its
design not because it pushed polygons. Liberation is basically an FPS made into top down and it has none of the trappings that Killzone 1 fell into, namely bad AI, technical issues, inconsistent level design... you know things that are indicative of their maturity as a studio.
But it's made on a much less technically advanced device. Which is sort of the point of the argument. It would be like saying that making a game that looks as good as a Nintendo 64, or early PS2 one takes alot of technical skill compared most modern games. It's a device that doesn't take near as much sophistication to develop on and make a great game. Case in point: Pokemon. A great game, but if you're going to tell me that quality automatically translates into the same skill it takes to develop on a console.. then there's not much I can do for you.
Just because they can develop a good game for the PSP does not mean that their luck is changing or that success will automatically relate to a console-based hit. It's just not going to work that way.
Good luck with that. This is what you don't get, overall Sony has a very strong first party development community, and overall they do a much better job of creating diverse and compelling software by targeting more demographics and delivering on those fronts. I love platformers, hence I'm very excited about Uncharted. I didn't say Microsofts studios were weak in terms of talent, they have a very high quality small group of studios. Sony has an overall high quality enormous group. They're currently making and publishing more games then Nintendo and Microsoft combined, and sure quantity doesn't equal quality, but SCEWWS has quality and to deny that is crazy just because you don't like the golf games.
They have quality, about the same amount as Microsoft, maybe. But they also have a bunch of mediocre to bad studios. I'm judging their first party as a whole, not just on their best studios. Overall, Microsoft definitely has one of the best first parties. Overall, Sony has an overrated first party because of the amount of "meh" studios they have in-house. Sony's is fairly inconsistent, whereas Microsoft's is solid across the board.
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