Resistance was big, but never a big as Halo, and Insomniac CEO Ted Price has his theories as to why the shooter never became a juggernaut for Sony the way Halo did for Microsoft.

Speaking with Kotaku, Price said one of the team’s theories is due to the changes made to the series with Resistance 2 development.

“We have theories internally about why Resistance wasn’t a Halo,” he said. “One is that we changed the game a lot in Resistance 2, and we surprised players in a way that perhaps wasn’t what was expected. And that may have not been a good thing. By changing up some of the core mechanics and— we got a lot of strong feedback when we did that.

“On Resistance 3, we went back to some of our more traditional core mechanics that players did love, and then built a story that was more personal. That in our opinion was the way to move the franchise forward in a way that was unique for first-person shooters.

“We’re really proud of Resistance 3. The team felt very personally connected to Resistance 3.”

Price also said the reason Insomniac didn’t develop Resistance for Vita, was due to the studio not having “the bandwidth to move onto the Vita.” Therefore, Sony handed off development duties for Resistance: Burning Skies to Nihilistic.

“We were really happy that Nihilistic went ahead and created their own vision of Resistance, and we feel very close to the franchise cause we created it, but it’s always interesting to see what other people do with it,” said Price.

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“I thought that what they did with the game made a lot of sense, in terms of the decisions that they came to with their core mechanics. So I felt like it stayed true to the universe… [but] frankly, I was spending a lot more time playing our own games.”

Insomniac’s next release is Ratchet & Clank: Q-Force, also known as Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault in the US. The firm is also working on FUSE – the game formerly known as Overstrike.