3 games, 3 teams, and ONE pool of money. For them to spend more money on one game (such as required when first creating a game), it must pull money from the others.
Each project usually receives a % of the development budget; and the budget is a % of the company's revenue. It goes up, or down, depending on various factors over the last financial year.
If your projects do suffer because of it, then you should fire your financial manager because obviously (s)he didn't budget correctly.
For example.
Hypothetical scenario.
ED was alone. It has 100% of the budget. Let's assume the budget was 1 million monies.
Then PC came along. ED's budget was lowered to 40%, and PC's was set at 60%. However, the budget was increased to 5 million monies. 40% of 5m is 2m. So whilst the budget % has dropped, ED's actual budget allowance has doubled.
Now JW:E is under development. ED's budget was lowered to 25%, PC's was set at 25% and JW:E's is at the remaining 50%. But, the budget was increased to 15 million monies thanks to the success of PC and ED. ED's budget has moved to 2.7m.
Once released, there's a chance (but no guarantee) each project will receive the same cut of the budget, 33.3~%.
So whilst yes, they do come from one pool of money, that's no basis to assume that other projects on the budget suffer as a result of the introduction of yet another project.
That's certianly possible, it is also possible that the earth gets hit by an asteroid and we all die in our sleep. Both are possible, both are highly unlikely.
In every single company I've worked for that had more than one large project, they have always had more than one team. It's quite a common practice in software development.; in my country at least - though we tend to follow the trend of leaders, UK/US etc.
There are companies that try to have multiple large projects and only one team; but they quickly find themselves swamped under. I can actually name a company off the top of my head that has done this; as a result, they are losing staff quickly because everyone is over-worked.
Don't strain yourself stretching those facts. 'Bigger than ever' doesn't mean bigger than the Jurassicworld team.
The size of the team is irrelevant.
One team here pulls 15% of total income a year and their product has been around for 10 years; they have 8 guys.
My team of 4, pulls almost 20% and we're still developing the product; we're only in our 3rd year.
There is also the fact that during initial development, a product might need a 20 member team; but once the ground-work is established and the product is functional and in release, it's entirely possible that a 20 member team is no longer needed at all times.
For example, audio. If no new audio is being developed for the game, those audio-pro's get moved onto other projects until they are needed back on another project.
It's called good management of staff resources.
However, that doesn't seem to be the case here.
Besides, that wasn't my point. My point was that if Frontier were shifting focus away from ED, their team wouldn't be "bigger than ever."
There is zero indication that ED is stagnating, or development is being pushed elsewhere at the expense of ED.
I'm sorry, and I mean no disrespect, but your general ignorance* of software development practices, and business finance 101 have lead you to reach conclusions that have no basis in fact.
* I hate that word.. ignorance.. it sounds so rude when that's not the intent at all.
