Yea...I'd think carefully about what you are saying here, readying in 4 years? You mean a longer cycle then Call Of Duty currently?
If anyone could get that done, I'd assume it would be the very team that is use to that cycle anyway, I'd argue they are getting a longer time frame under Sony in that respect lol
Its like the people that doubt Spiderman 2 coming next year, folks....have you seen how Insomniac fucking puts out games? Once they have some established engine and framework, they become unstoppable machines lol So this team doesn't sound that different considering how the normal COD cycle actually is. Any other team and I'd agree with you btw, but not all teams are same and context is key in a situation like this.
lol fucking yesssssssss! I'm not shocked, when I was in real estate builders would do that shit all the time. They'd give us a listing of like 100 units (literally one of the biggest deals of my life that paid my entire way thru college and still is paying lol) and they'd give us like concept mock ups and I was like "ok, but when can we do a showing, stop by cause I like to preview listings myself when I host and like to take my own pictures and measurements etc" and they'd be like "we'll between you and me, it won't be done in 6 months or even this year, this is to get funding, so we need you to list the mock ups on your channels" The deep, deep lolz
Its not my business to tell them how they want their property viewed, or sold and they can sell sight unseen which has happened to me maybe twice and my sister at lease a few times, its shady, questionable, but to my understanding its not illegal as that project was still finished like 2 years later. So I wouldn't really be shocked that some teams need the funding, will announce with some massive CGI trailer knowing fucking DAMN WELL that game isn't done or finished, but to get intrest from publishers and different companies.
Its hard to say who is doing it cause they are seeking to scam and who is doing it knowing the team indeed can pull that off, they just need the extra time, funding etc. We've seen lots of games get announced early, delayed and still released just fine, so its likely on a game by game basis or something.
Shanomatic
"Serious question: how many times has this “studio made up of industry veterans making a game similar to one they previously worked on” even resulted in a smash hit" lol I think you need to look up the credits to most games.
Most of the industry is contracted, I would be more shocked if you told me some new AAA game is moving massive units by a team that has NEVER worked on anything else before, as in 100% of the team is new or something. That should help you understand how weird that question is lol
Even Infinity Ward is made up of a team that used to make Medal Of Honor for EA along with Danger Close Games which was DICE LA, which is now Ripple Effects....... Its not as cut and dry and black and white as just saying the name of a team or something, even forming some tree from that title is a complex one, but I'll try lol
Infinity Ward founded by 3 people who worked on the 2002 Medal Of Honor game and was a 22 developer team. Grant Collier, Jason West and Vince Zampella. Activision bought the team in 2003 after they made the very first Call Of Duty.
2005 Call Of Duty 2, their staff is now at 75 to meet the demands to release on both PC and X360, as in to suggest the extra needed staff have more to do with multiplatform development which is expected.
2006 Treyarch is used to put out Call Of Duty 3, Activsion has plans for yearly release, thus gets more teams to assist in that effort.
2007 Call Of Duty 4 releases, their staff size is now 25 more, at 100.
2009-2010 the 2 founders (Jason West and Vince Zampella) leave Activision to form a new team (not sure how many go with them mind you) the only figure I can find states 16, which means its very, very likely most of the original Infinity Ward team are now at ReSpawn. As a COD fan myself, I could feel their absence as the last good COD imho, is MW2, its not shocking that its the last of the core IW original team. The best ones then imo are
Call Of Duty 1
Call Of Duty 2
Call Of Duty 4
Call Of Duty MW2 aka 5, aka 4-2 the revenge lol
2014, Activision merges Neversoft to Infinity Ward to help, so most of Infinity Ward now, is literally made up of the old Neversoft team...., we might as well say Infinity Ward by name only, but really just call them Neversoft as 90% of that team is those developer tbh.
So a person still makes a game, taking them from 1 publisher to another doesn't suddenly mean they can't make a great game or something, they are still those people that made Call Of Duty.
From Medal Of Honor
Call Of Duty
Titanfall
APEX
Star Wars Fallen Order
more?
From Halo, to Destiny (I recall Bungie did make other titles too like that Oni game)
From Resident Evil to Vanquish to Evil Within.
From Devil May Cry, to Bayonetta.
From System Shock 2 to Bioshock
and many more. It happens more often then you think because the industry is mainly contracted, so people go from team to team, publisher to publisher and its not unusual that you'd see someone work on a FPS tha worked on Call Of Duty or Halo or Doom or Assassins Creed or all 4, literally you can find weird set ups like that. The publisher can take people off of projects and they can go from a baseball game to a Call Of Duty or something lol Look at Neversoft, from Tony Hawk, to Guitar Hero, to Call Of Duty. You might question what a person who worked on such an IP can do working on Call Of Duty and worry, Call Of Duty MW 2019 shows what years of working on that IP allowed that team to do post Guitar Hero days. So how this works is a real complex one and people all over the industry go from so many different projects. Even if they never did something like that before, they can learn, art can be learned, applied differently etc.
They whole Playtonics situation I feel is maybe a bad example lol, they were never going to be able to catpure that late 90's, early 2000's platforming love, it was a great game, but its too late to recapture that flame. That being said, the next great new IP can be made by a team you never heard of, but a team that has likely made some of the best games in the world collectively. Not everyone has the star power of a Kojima to command that attention and its why I feel this subject is so hard to describe tbh.