Yeah, but what evidence is there that any or all issues with GT have been due to the number of people that work there?
PD are first party, much of the staff that other companies have to liaise and make red tape and make the tea are probably absorbed by Sony. Naughty Dog are first party, too, and they have a similarly "low" personage (when you consider the scope, turnover and "hype" of their games) when "split across two teams".
But look at id - only 200 people when they never have just one project ticking over, and they make multi-platform games? Or Epic, which not only makes games but markets, documents and supports an entire development environment (compare with Crytek; also Unity)? Madness!
Why is 200 the target number, as a "minimum"?
The real question is, why can't those developers do a proportionally better job (minimum 25%; a solid 9.25 on metacritic
) with so many more people?
Note also that PD have been expanding; ultimately, they know best how to strengthen the productivity of
their team without sacrificing efficiency (as outsourcing tends to do).
Maybe they're more concerned with long term sustainability rather than short term exploitation of resources. When you consider we've had a global financial crisis and the disaster in Japan recently, perhaps that attitude makes sense.
But yeah, I guess being honest with the public is never a good marketing move!
It
is weird that we're being told that stuff "might not make it", but I think that's more indicative of PD's avant-garde approach to systems-oriented design in video games, something that is taking its sweet time in maturing thanks to the profit machine focusing on the CoD-likes of the various genres, rather than being due to a comparatively "small" workforce. Check out the "Indie" scene for examples of what kinds of innovation and, at times, polish very small teams can achieve. Also,
this.
You only really need more people for more content (and more people to "manage" them); changing the way content is made might shift that balance in PD's favour too (I'm thinking sounds here for PD, but it's also what Epic did, and what Crytek does for smaller teams). Throwing more people at certain programming challenges might not help very much, either, as communication will be the limiting factor.
As somebody else mentioned, though, the era of "finished" games is over anyway. Given that GT6 won't be the full image of Kaz's "vision" for the series, no GT game will be "finished" until that is true. Whether the game works as one contiguous, "closed" and intra-connected piece remains to be seen. If things come later to expand that regardless, great.
I know that, going forwards, teams will have to keep growing. I don't know whether that's linearly beneficial for the "product", or sustainable for the industry in the long run, and that's maybe not important right now. What I'm arguing against is this idea that we somehow know better than PD do in how to manage that requirement in their own team for their own projects, and just how comparable other teams and other projects are.
