I heard they lost almost the whole team who worked on GE before PD was even released... and imo PD still ended up much better than goldeneye. (except for the story, which had no movie to borrow from
)
I'm sure if the few guys who worked on GE could pull off somthing as good as timesplitters, the reamains of the PD team could pull off somthing just as good. The difference is they could rob much more from PD without it being called a rip-off, and this game is exclusive, so they will get more out of the Xbox hardware than TS could ever... but we'll see.
If this game sucks then Nintendo was smart, but if it's good Microsoft is smart.... all that other crap they are coming out with won't be my judge.