BG&E again

[A Black Falcon]

They're not the best at anything?? Please name one other western third-party developer that has put out as many quality releases in the past few years. Please, just try.

Quanity != Greatness. Quality + Quantity also don't necessarially equal being the best. Ubisoft does have a good run of solid titles (and a lineup of cheap ones too), but if I like the games other developers are making more the fact that they have produced fewer games is irrelevant.

Blizzard = best developer. Anywhere.

For some more very good Western developers, just look at PC games. There are a whole lot of them there. I'd make a list, but it would look familiar...

As for Ubisoft, they annoyed me by abandoning Conquest: Frontier Wars (a good RTS)... yes, it didn't sell great and every other big company has done the same, but the point is Ubisoft isn't oh so much better.

Anyway... currently good Western developers? Blizzard. :) Firaxis, Troika, Obsidian, Bioware... I could go on for quite a while. There are a lot of very good smaller developers, certainly more than on that list. If you mean publishers, though, it's harder. None of the major publishers (Ubisoft, Vivendi Universal, EA, Activision, Take Two, etc) are great. Oh, they make some good games, but most of the best are from independant developers. I'm not sure what it is about the big ones that drains innovation but it sure seems to happen... Ubisoft as much as anywhere. Just look at sequels like Rayman 3 -- good game, but not exactly innovation-driven...