Unless PD hasn't updated their site they still only have 110 employees.

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Mods: Feel free to move this. Wasn't sure where to post.

http://www.polyphony.co.jp/english/index.html

"Employees: Approx. 110"

This could explain the delay in content (cough, course creator, cough) for GT6.

It just seems absurd to me. It's easily the largest grossing game in all of PlayStation. It is also probably one of the most ambitious franchises as well, yet they continue to under deliver. Yes, a lot of their problems have been technical. But things like modeling and such can be outsourced. Their current credits list of GT6 has less than 20 modelers. I'm assuming those modelers range from vehicles, to tracks, to other props and people.

There is another (unnamed) game company that has over 200 employees with another 200 or so outsourced. I truly believe that if PD had more man power, we can get a truly revolutionary GT game.

Their lack of man power showed with GT5. The amount of licenses that were truly strung out thin, resulting in a jack of all trades, but master of none.
 
It took them over two years after GT5 came out to remove the feature list of GT5 Prologue stating you would be able to transfer your garage to GT5 . Those out of the way portions of the English site only get updated when they release a new game. Other than that they just add new news rather than change old stuff.
 
According to this Wikipedia page, there's 271:

image.jpg


But as some stated, I'm pretty sure their "official" site is out of date. There's no way a AAA first party studio making these kinds of games can be that small.
 
Mods: Feel free to move this. Wasn't sure where to post.

http://www.polyphony.co.jp/english/index.html

"Employees: Approx. 110"

This could explain the delay in content (cough, course creator, cough) for GT6.

It just seems absurd to me. It's easily the largest grossing game in all of PlayStation. It is also probably one of the most ambitious franchises as well, yet they continue to under deliver. Yes, a lot of their problems have been technical. But things like modeling and such can be outsourced. Their current credits list of GT6 has less than 20 modelers. I'm assuming those modelers range from vehicles, to tracks, to other props and people.

There is another (unnamed) game company that has over 200 employees with another 200 or so outsourced. I truly believe that if PD had more man power, we can get a truly revolutionary GT game.

Their lack of man power showed with GT5. The amount of licenses that were truly strung out thin, resulting in a jack of all trades, but master of none.

Perhaps if you had an assistant, this thread would be more accurate.
 
According to this Wikipedia page, there's 271:

View attachment 243355

But as some stated, I'm pretty sure their "official" site is out of date. There's no way a AAA first party studio making these kinds of games can be that small.

According to waybackmachine the number on their website (110) didn't change since 2008. In 2006 they listed 80 employees, in 2007 they listed 90 employees and in 2008 it was 110. It seems unlikely that nothing changed since 2008, so my guess is that they simply haven't updated that figure.

Based on the extremely few data points available (which isn't really enough to make any kind of prediction) I put together a graph. If (and this is a huge if) the expansion rate has remained the same as the few years for which there are data (dismissing the data since 2008 as unreliable), then the current number of employees could be in the neighbourhood of 250 by now.

emp.jpg


It's based on extremely few and old data points, so this prediction is pretty much useless. Unless we can trust the wikipedia figure of 271 (for which there is no source) then I guess all we do know with some degree of certainty is that we don't know how many employees they have today.
 
it seems they don't update anything...

...other than their games.

Back to topic: Back in 2009 this source said "over 140 employees".

http://www.worldwidestudios.net/polyphony

Edit: Here's an updated graph with the numbers that I've been able to find:

emp2.jpg

The first two points are from PD's website in 2006 and 2007.
The third point is from an interview with Kazunori Yamauchi in 2008 where he said that 120 people were working on GT5.
The fourth point is from Sony Worldwide studio's website in 2009.
The fifth point is from the move to Fukuoka in 2011, where 50 out of 150 employees moved from Tokyo (and that is likely the source for the information from the article in 2013 that also mentions 150 employees, because it's worded in almost the exact same way).

The sixth and last point is from Wikipedia, an edit that was made in 2014. I'm not sure about the credibility. On one hand there's no source listed, but on the other hand the person making the edit have only made edits on wikipedia relating to statistics about Sony and Gran Turismo. There's a possibility that it's a person with good insight, but there's also a possibility that it's someone who just makes things up.
 
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It's easily the largest grossing game in all of PlayStation.

Umm... Some figures backing that claim up would be good... I highly doubt it is the largest grossing PS game of all time. Highest grossing PS exclusive? Still probably not.

GTA will have grossed higher than GT6 on PS3, as will Call of Duty, Battlefield, Fifa and all those other daft EA 'Roll out a new game each year' franchises.

I like GT6 and the GT franchise, but I think you're making it out to be much bigger than it is.
 
No it really is the highest selling PlayStation exclusive. Even a simple Google search on your part you'll find a number of articles.
 
That 271 from wikipedia is an inflated number.

Considering GT6 was out for a month when that article was posted, I'm not surprised. One game had half a year, the other was barely out for 30 days.
True, however based on googling the overall sales volumes GT6 is pushing 3 million units. TLoU has passed 7 million units.
 
True, however based on googling the overall sales volumes GT6 is pushing 3 million units. TLoU has passed 7 million units.
Does that count The Last of Us Remastered that came out in July for PS4 as well?
 
Edit: I counted the ending credits of GT4, GT5 and GT6. I then sorted the people into different categories based on the job titles (for some job titles I had to make a guess). This is the result:

empl3.png


Now, it doesn't say wether all these people are employed by PD (it does list people employed by Seji Co. which seems to be a company they're cooperating with. There's a handful of them involved in each game and they're part of teams together with PD staff), but I think what's important for this discussion is how many people are involved in developing the game. I didn't count the people at Sony who are responsible for the music (since most of the music wasn't made specifically for the games) and I didn't count voice actors, people who designed specific cars (such as VGT cars, GT by Citroën, X1, etc) and people who appear to simply be contact persons for other companies. I also didn't count people testing the games.

The list to the right of the graph gives the categories. Here's a short description of each of them:

Movie - Movie directors and editors. I'm guessing intro and ending movies and promotion videos.

Development Environment / Support - I'm not sure, but my guess is that it's people taking care of the facilities, such as janitors or cleaners or something like that. They were featured at the end of the credits so it's probably not high status jobs.

Race engine / AI - I guess it explains itself, more or less. Some say that this is where B-spec Bob was conceived.

Web / GT TV - Website and GT TV. This category did not exist in the GT4 credits.

Explore / Test - I'm not sure what this is. It's not people testing the game, because those were credited separately. It could be people coordinating the tests, or something like that. "Explore" sounds like something related to R&D but I have no idea what it is.

Sound - Sound design, sound simulation and sound producers. Music is not included.

Graphic design / UI - Explains itself I guess. Icons, menus, user interface...

Producers / Legal - Producer, executive producers, producer's assistant, business and legal people.

Engineer / Data / System - Code monkeys, I suppose.

Landscape / CG - People involved in landscape modelling, visual effects, and graphics (not graphic design).

Car modelling / Dynamics - Modelling of the cars and the driving physics.
 
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I would try and do this myself but I'm just about to leave the house, but I wonder what efficiency figures would be if we calculated days/hours to complete the game against the amount of staff working on the game, and then compared that efficiency figure to other similar titles and see how the GT franchise stacks up.

It would be good to see if PD is as slow as many people seem to think, or if the time they take corrolates perfectly with staffing levels (i.e, half the staff of Forza, twice as long to complete the game compared to Forza). By complete, I also mean an actual finished product as advertised, not just it's release date with the game still missing many key features.

Because at the moment, 200+ staff and still an uncomplete game nearly one year after release sounds bad already, let alone the years they were working on it since GT5 came out and most of the work was already done (tracks, cars, gathering data of tracks and cars).
 
I would try and do this myself but I'm just about to leave the house, but I wonder what efficiency figures would be if we calculated days/hours to complete the game against the amount of staff working on the game, and then compared that efficiency figure to other similar titles and see how the GT franchise stacks up.

It would be good to see if PD is as slow as many people seem to think, or if the time they take corrolates perfectly with staffing levels (i.e, half the staff of Forza, twice as long to complete the game compared to Forza). By complete, I also mean an actual finished product as advertised, not just it's release date with the game still missing many key features.
Turn 10 also outsources work, so the numbers would be skewed.
 
Forget that, kunos have 10+ people and they made 1/4 of what PD made in 2 years.. :lol:

On serious note, I thought PD has been hiring lately, if I read that news correct a couple of months ago? Would be nice know if they are all focused on GT7 by now.

Nope. Outsourcing is just as bad as letting one person model one car. It needs to be a team effort from within. Better results that way.

But wouldn't that helps a lot if the team is struggling? Especially car/track modeling is a very time consuming job. I think giving the full details to a 3rd party of what they really want (e.g. Poly count, looks, etc.) will shave off time on development and a win win for everyone. And let some of the team handle bug fix and core elements like physics, gameplay etc..
 
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Nope. Outsourcing is just as bad as letting one person model one car. It needs to be a team effort from within. Better results that way.
Nope not agree, outsourcing is the future because when you outsource you can be more focus on your main/core goals, less management and more efficient.
They can outsource cars modeling and just put the final touch (example order cars modeled at 90% and do the other 10% which are details).
Regards results, look at what turn 10 did with FM5 graphically.
 
Nope not agree, outsourcing is the future because when you outsource you can be more focus on your main/core goals, less management and more efficient.
They can outsource cars modeling and just put the final touch (example order cars modeled at 90% and do the other 10% which are details).
Regards results, look at what turn 10 did with FM5 graphically.
They still have to spend time making sure the car is made to their standards, and if it isn't, that's more time spent on fixing something that they could have done in the beginning.

Edit: FM5 is on a new console... that did everything. They've been outsourcing since FM3. It's also how they're able to put a game out every other year.

Other than standard models and their philosophy about one person per model, I have no issues with how PD does things, especially since they've been restricted by 256MB of RAM on the PS3.
 
They still have to spend time making sure the car is made to their standards, and if it isn't, that's more time spent on fixing something that they could have done in the beginning.

When you outsource everything is set in a contract at the beginning , there is contract clauses. ( example, if he deliver late there will be some penalty as well with the quality)
And checking take less time than doing the job.

Advantages of Outsourcing.

1. Focus On Core Activities
In rapid growth periods, the back-office operations of a company will expand also. This expansion may start to consume resources (human and financial) at the expense of the core activities that have made your company successful. Outsourcing those activities will allow refocusing on those business activities that are important without sacrificing quality or service in the back-office.

Example: A company lands a large contract that will significantly increase the volume of purchasing in a very short period of time; Outsource purchasing.

2. Cost And Efficiency Savings

Back-office functions that are complicated in nature, but the size of your company is preventing you from performing it at a consistent and reasonable cost, is another advantage of outsourcing.

Example: A small doctor's office that wants to accept a variety of insurance plans. One part-time person could not keep up with all the different providers and rules. Outsource to a firm specializing in medical billing.

3. Reduced Overhead
Overhead costs of performing a particular back-office function are extremely high. Consider outsourcing those functions which can be moved easily.

Example: Growth has resulted in an increased need for office space. The current location is very expensive and there is no room to expand. Outsource some simple operations in order to reduce the need for office space. For example, outbound telemarketing or data entry.

4. Operational Control
Operations whose costs are running out of control must be considered for outsourcing. Departments that may have evolved over time into uncontrolled and poorly managed areas are prime motivators for outsourcing. In addition, an outsourcing company can bring better management skills to your company than what would otherwise be available.

Example: An information technology department that has too many projects, not enough people and a budget that far exceeds their contribution to the organization. A contracted outsourcing agreement will force management to prioritize their requests and bring control back to that area.

5. Staffing Flexibility
Outsourcing will allow operations that have seasonal or cyclical demands to bring in additional resources when you need them and release them when you're done.

Example: An accounting department that is short-handed during tax season and auditing periods. Outsourcing these functions can provide the additional resources for a fixed period of time at a consistent cost.

6. Continuity & Risk Management
Periods of high employee turnover will add uncertainty and inconsistency to the operations. Outsourcing will provided a level of continuity to the company while reducing the risk that a substandard level of operation would bring to the company.

Example: The human resource manager is on an extended medical leave and the two administrative assistants leave for new jobs in a very short period of time. Outsourcing the human resource function would reduce the risk and allow the company to keep operating.

7. Develop Internal Staff
A large project needs to be undertaken that requires skills that your staff does not possess. On-site outsourcing of the project will bring people with the skills you need into your company. Your people can work alongside of them to acquire the new skill set.

Example: A company needs to embark on a replacement/upgrade project on a variety of custom built equipment. Your engineers do not have the skills required to design new and upgraded equipment. Outsourcing this project and requiring the outsourced engineers to work on-site will allow your engineers to acquire a new skill set.

Source:
http://operationstech.about.com/od/officestaffingandmanagem/a/OutSrcAdvantg.htm
 
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