There's no company who's name immediately says "gold" to me.
I won't lie, given two games I've never played before and if I was forced to choose between the two; One was say...Infogrammes/Atari and the other was Treasure, I'm going to take Treasure.
Comparatively, in my opinion, Treasure has a better over-all track record. So I'd pick thier game if it came to that.
But that's like the 4th criterion! It's right around the coin-flip tie breaker in the NFL. You have overall record, conference record, head to head record..and so on, until finally you just flip a coin to decide who gets in the play-offs. You only do it after you've exhausted all the real decision making information at your disposal.
On a name alone basis, I'd take them by their past works over quite a few other companies.
That's no way to live though. There are other houses that I'd take over Treasure (I'll say it, EAD, don't like it? Suck a dick. I'd also take anything by SegaRosso because even though they don't have a whole lot of titles everything I've played from them has been wholey awesome.).
To me, it's a minor point. Either the game is good or it isn't. It's true that it might get a little more attention from me because of the developer, but I won't hoist it up on high unless it deserves it.
I think that's a problem. Too many people love or hate (or say they love or hate) a game just because of the developer.
It's like some wierd game prejudice. I say never hate someone based on thier skin color, religion or what have you. The true motherfuckers of the world, the ones you should hate will give you ample reason to hate them on thier own without relying on thier race.
Same goes for games. The games that really suck will let you know in no uncertain terms that they suck, just give them the chance.
And at the risk of being positive, the exact same thing is true for deciding wether a game is good or not.
Then again...what do I know?
