The N64 one is on my top 10 list of greatest games ever. I thought the sequel was alright, and I never got around to getting the third. I should actually try finding it.

I never played the one for N64. It did look good though, not gonna lie. 😛 And yea the third one, was said to be even better than the second I believe[a rare occurence most of the time].

I never played a single one of their titles, so I officially don't really care.

I do recall that the second Rouge Squadron was supposed to be one of the better Gamecube launch titles, but once the big-name Nintendo titles came out, I stopped caring. I actually completely forgot about it up until now.

Well, it's all esculation, isn't it. The price of making a game is going up so ridiculously high that every release seems to be a make-or-break deal with the devil.

Of course, I'm sure some of these studios could have gone or DLC or portable games and saved some pocket change for themselves. It's sad to see studios dying off, but it's just a result of the times. The industry is moving too fast for everyone to keep up.

As much as big publishers such as EA and Activision buying up all the independent developers might seem bad for the industry, with things how the are I guess it means a team can afford to make a mistake without it knocking them out of business (which is essentially what seemed to happen in both this case and for Free Radical - neither Lair nor Haze were commercial successes and were hit badly by critics, despite their high standard of previous games and (presumed) commercial success).

Of course, you could just avoid making bad games. I mean it's working for Valve, isn't it?

But, typically, making a good game means focusing on R&D and making sure it's tested enough to be decent as a final product. 70% of the reason Sonic sucks these days is because Sega want a new game out every single year.

Now look at say, Twilight Princess, kept in development for 3/4 years. That's a lot of time and money to spend on a single game, but it tends to pay off all the time.

I would quote Miyamoto here but I'm sure we've heard it all before.

If I were a developer heading a team in an ideal word, I'd make sure everyone knew what they were doing, let them get on with it until an alpha build was ready, and then trial it. That way you can have a relatively unbiased opinion of how the project is going along - if you maintain involvement throughout you might become attached to your work and be unable to look at it subjectively.