The budgets skyroceted. i20 game (Spiderman 1) had about $90M of dev costs. That doesn't include marketing I'd assume, but compared to SM2 and SM3 their total costs are est. at over $300M. SM3 is $385M. If marketing is a key variable difference, there is no way marketing costs would be around $250-300M difference.
In real world, people love AssCreed games. The latest big one set records. New smaller one sold extremely well. It's other Ubi efforts that might struggle. Vox populi and all that.
Anyway, I don't see Insomniacs as some kind of auteurs forced to abandon high art. Even RC looks like something Disney could put their stamp on. It's all extremely well done, but rather pop!, a bit generic, Marvelesque. Sunset Overdrive looked like ugly kitsch. This isn't Kojima, let alone Team Ico. I think they are uniquely suited to producing well-done, professional, Hollywood blockbusters inspired by other's IPs.
I got a distaste for talking about sales, but man those Resistance sales are undeserved. R2 did a slump in consistency, but rebounded more or less in R3.
The budgets skyroceted. i20 game (Spiderman 1) had about $90M of dev costs. That doesn't include marketing I'd assume, but compared to SM2 and SM3 their total costs are est. at over $300M. SM3 is $385M. If marketing is a key variable difference, there is no way marketing costs would be around $250-300M difference.