Nintendo? but that's more "publisher who curates external- or internal-studios who largely stay in the same genre each"

Yeah, Nintendo is the publisher in most of those scenarios. The individual studios, including Nintedo, tend to just iterate from what I can see.

I wonder what the "new game onboarding" process at Nintendo looks like. Thinking of something relatively more left-field and recent like the Mario Rabbids tactical thing for Switch.

Was that pitched to them? Solicited to studios by them? In the latter case that would be a fascinating process to observe.

Rabbids are a spinoff from Rayman. I would assume Ubisoft was the driving creative force behind it. And it's somewhat damning that the "relatively recent" innovation is currently two expansion packs into its second installment.

Video games are like 50 years old now, relatively recent is relative... ;)

Whatever you label them, the same studios keep pumping out great games.

Supergiant is pretty close? Bastion, Transistor, Pyre and Hades have all been pretty big hits in different genres and styles. They're consistently high production value in terms of art/soundtrack/writing, but the gameplay varies a good bit. About the same release cadence as Bethesda in my memory while being a smaller studio.

FromSoft is also making a new Armored Core, which I imagine should be pretty different from Dark Souls.

I’m not sure I follow the point of this criteria. They find niches and leverage their experience. This is what everyone in the professional world does.

The point is that there must be a formula if studios can consistently deliver.

Rockstar has grand theft auto and grand theft horse.

I hope some day to play grand theft spaceship, grand theft dragon, and maybe grand theft dinosaur.

Isn't that essentially what Leslie Benzies is working on with the 'Everywhere' project?

Valve and Obsidian Entertainment have such catalogue but even great studios fail from time to time.

Most will find a formula that works for a niche and stick with it. Which is smart because innovation increases both the chance of achieving something great and of releasing a fiasco.