LMAO at all the Insomniac mentions, honestly.
When Insomniac was putting out mediocre shooters that sold poorly like Resistance, Naughty Dog was providing Sony with its most important New IP in a decade (Uncharted)
When Insomniac was putting out failed trash like Sunset Overdrive on THE XBOX, Naughty Dog was dropping fucking The Last of Us.
None of you would even mention their name in this thread without the blessings of Marvel providing them with 2 popular world renown IPs.
Their biggest and most famous IP is arguably Spyro, a dead franchise, no longer Sony exclusive. And Ratchet, the last game looked amazing, was very fun, but did nothing to push the genre forward.
You're not wrong, but I don't know that you can really put that down to studio quality.
Uncharted has an 88 on metacritic with a 7.9 user rating. The game sold 4.8 million copies.
Resistance has an 86 with a 8.0 user rating. The game sold 2.5 million copies.
My point here is the games were really comparable.
Uncharted had an extra year of install base, less competition in the genre.
Ultimately, I think Resistance needed a bit more polish to hit home right and a more matured PSN. They had a tougher task for sure.
I also think Naughty Dog was able to dive a bit deeper in because they were first party and had been for some time. They also got a bigger boost by Sony as well, this I think really paved the way for Uncharted 2 and eventually the Last of Us.
It's interesting to think of what Insomniac could have done on a similar pass as Naughty Dog, but after Jak and Ratchet they've really diverged in different directions.
Insomniac does need their own big IP though and should hopefully be working through that. I think Ratchet should probably be left behind at this point no pun intended.
Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine will give Insomniac the size and growth needed to commit to their own IP in between Marvel games. They could grow significantly faster than Naughty Dog ironically. Linkedin headcount growth has Naughty Dog at 9 growth in the last 6 months, which is tremendous, especially in this economy. They only have a 2.2 year average tenure though. Insomniac, on the other hand, has 6% growth and 3.3 years average tenure. Think we'll see that number explode after Spider-Man 2 as the team turns its focus to Wolverine.