alt Hacker News>When a small studio gets bought by a bigger one, it typically results in more production from the small studio
No, you get the small studio forced to produce more, when that is not how art is made. Eventually you milk it dry and it sucks for everyone except the people who walked away with more money from owning things.
Bungie being pushed to produce more didn't make more genre defining games. Same for id.
In fact, thanks to the stupidity of Xbox and Sony, we have very clear evidence very recently that allowing big studios to buy and run small artists is a great way to pump out low quality slop that doesn't even do well financially.
Bungie is especially funny because it wasn't out putting more games. With the sunsetting of destiny 2, Sony traded one golden goose for a normal one. I guess that's inevitable when management changes.
Id is an odd example, though. They seemed to be the most reasonably managed Xbox studio in quality and output. Pretty much every other studio (outside of Obsidian) acquired this decade has barely gotten more than 2 games out post acquisition, but Id is (was?) a solid 3-4 year clip of releases with support for each title.
>allowing big studios to buy and run small artists is a great way to pump out low quality slop that doesn't even do well financially.
Scale definitely matters. When it's a very small team getting publishing deals, it's often exciting, because usually it's just a team that really needs money being thrown money and at worst some milestones and feedback. When it's a somewhat sustainable studio of 20+ devs it starts to get shaky when acquisitions come in and you wonder if corporate will ruin that synergy. By 100+ it really should be a proper studio that can support operations and not be too prone to being gobbled up into another wing of megacorp.