I agree 100%. Telling people that the long console cycle is hurting their ability to create new IP's is laughable. Sure if you plan on making a game like Mass Effect knowing it's going to be a triology from the start then you may be better off near the beginning of the cycle. But even new IP's that might have sequels after that carry over to new hardware can still be made now and his example of God of War shows that.

A good IP can sell at any time, same with a bad new IP.

So you'll ignore Halo and God of War, whose trilogies started last generation? God of War is a TRUE prime example, as its games were released QUITE late in the life of the PS2.

And assuming you make an IP worth buying LATE in the gen, people will want to buy the new system to get the next installment(if it's a series). Sort of an example is Halo: the new Reclaimer trilogy is starting on the 360, and continuing on the Nextbox, which will ensure that people will buy that system to continue the story. inFamous is another good example: people love the series, and I don't doubt that, should there be inFamous 3 announced for the PS4, people will want that system to play it.

That's not to say that launching new IPs earlier in the gen is bad. But then you ONLY look at series, and not one-off games, nor do you look at- as mentioned above- God of War, which saw an amazing third entry.

Whatever. You rarely make sense. And, as I said before, soon as your bubbles started dropping, your true colors came out.

Well thats the point. If you going to take a huge risk making a big budget IP you better get a huge reward.

Otherwise nobody would even bother making big budgets IP's. Because most of them fail so when you do get lucky, and get a hit you had better be able to get a HUGE profit on it to make up for the ones that fail.

More than that, it's logistically untenable. Inevitably, when teams get too large, how do you keep tabs on accountability? I suspect this massive team size is a consequence of the perfectionism streak Naughty Dog has.

I wish we could have so many people working on something and it turns out great because I'm all for collaboration in spirit - the problem is too many people as part of the larger team and smaller units. Suppose for example that you have too many people in the art department; you will very often come up against fiercely competing visions for how things should look. That competitive vision will cause friction between team members, team doesn't work as a unit, the back and forth can further delay parts that the other departments are waiting for, etc etc.

A 200-person team says, to me, that we need to scale back game development. Even if it means we go back to PS2 era costs and scale, why not? Those games are still great fun, the budgets were in check, and you could literally break the 200-man team into like 10 20-man teams working on different projects.