23 studios n needs 3rd party help ok
Silly
Naughty Dog needed 14 studios and over 2000 people to make The Last of Us 2. I mean, let's not pretend as if this isn't common practice for the industry. You know how many games start out from a smaller subset of creative leads and senior designers initially and then ultimately goes on to receive serious manpower and support from various outside contractors and established studios? The key difference with The Initiative is they've been more heavily watched and followed from the start. Every new addition, every time they get some talent from Naughty Dog or Santa Monica Studio, whatever.
And what makes you think all those other studios aren't already pre-occupied with their own major projects? In some ways I understand going this route, as it might not be viewed as fair that another team that had a whole other vision for what they wanted to make, end up working on The Initiative's vision for a Perfect Dark reboot.
They already have a prototype because it's been played by Phil, by one of their previous lead designers who moved back over to Insomniac, likely to work on Wolverine no doubt. The goal is to bring that package together into something more complete and awesome that can be shown to the public and then eventually released to very positive reception. Time will tell, but I'm a whole lot more excited now in the direction of this game because it has a studio that's proven on it. A studio that is very, VERY good with system's based gameplay mechanics, immersive set-pieces, stealth elements, solid character progression, etc. You name it, Crystal Dynamics has done it in one form or another at a very high level with the Tomb Raider titles.
