[John Channing]

Originally Posted by 7Enigma

And I would be willing to bet you if they received the proper bad press for releasing such an unfinished product, and thus also receiving poor sales figures, this trend would change. Gamers buy games based on 4 main factors:

1. The media blitz gets their attention and they buy based on hype

2. Review sites that say yay/nay

3. Friends/family/peers

4. Demo's or pirated versions

Businesses like money, plain and simple. They look at the bottom line. If you can release a product that is unfinished and reap very similar profits than holding off for a couple more months to get the job done right, every business person out there will push the product out early.

When you have review after review praising a game while brushing over the severe bugs or mentioning in passing I see a major problem there. What I would love is to have someone step up to the plate and flatly score a product. If there are CTD and savegame flaws prevalent, that game should NOT receive over a 5/10. I don't care if its the best, most revolutionary gameplay ever created. If its reviewed on release, as purchased in the store or sent from a manufacturer, that's the game. No, "we've been told by UBI that a patch is in the works that will fix these minor issues". Just, "Sorry, this game failed to meet a minimum criteria of acceptability".

Maybe I'm asking too much, but maybe, just maybe, we've all been slowly brainwashed into thinking this current "norm" is acceptable.

In the abstract what you say is correct, but how do you deal with the following real world scenario.

- Business Affairs meets with the Developers and agrees upon a release date.

- Marketing books ads in Trade magazines, reserves shelf space in stores worldwide, schedules interviews, create ad copy, schedules previews with major sites and publications and generally does their job. All of this is cancellable, but some will incur financial penalties.

- Distribution books production time with several DVD Replication Shops worldwide to assure prodct is available. Cancellable, but with financial penalties.

- Maunfacturing books time to create, manufacture and ship DVD cases, with jackets, to DVD houses to conicide with the finish of the burn process. Cancellable, but with financial penalties.

- Shipping companies are contracted to get the product to retailers. Cancellable, but with financial penalties.

- Printers are booked to produce manuals and game inserts and arrangements are made to have them shipped to the fulfillment houses at the same time the DVDs and other packaging arrives. Cancellable, but with financial penalties.

- release dates are sent out to on-line store who begin taking pre-orders based on the ship date Marketing has provided.

And then

- The developers discover that there is no way in hell that the product can be ready in time for the release date that was agreed to about a year ago.

If you cancel the entire chain of events, aside from the financial penalties that you would incur, you have to re-set the chain, which means you have to pull resources off other, probably more profitable projects. As well you are going to have a lot of negative press about your inability to hit your ship dates (SH3 and the Dynamic Campaign delay anyone?).

As to the financial penalties, you have not budgeted for them, so that cost has to come from somewhere. Where? You can't say "from increased sales of a better project" becuase if you go to any Project Manager anywhere with that statement you will be laughed out of the room, and rightfully so. You don't make financial projections based on "Gee Whiz, guys... it'll be great!".

Again, in the abstract it would be great if deadlines for a bug free product could be predicted a year in advance so that none of this would happen, but in reality thats not the way the world works.

JCC