» Fri Jan 08, 2010 1:58 am
The older days of gaming were better, It was get it right first time or nobody would buy your game. Now it seems its perfectly fine to ship a broken game and its all swell i we patch it up at a later date.
while i agree that the "release it now, patch it later" trend is detrimental to us gamers, we can't put the blame completely on Crytek's (or other developer's) shoulders. Game developers nowadays are under tremendous pressure from their publishers to get games done and out the door, regardless of if they're totally ready or not. The only time this isn't the case is if the publisher and developer are one in the same, i.e. blizzard or valve (and look at how long it takes them to release games!) From a numbers perspective, this makes sense, since publishers and devs will make more money quicker by releasing it ASAP. Implementing patches after release doesn't cost either of them money, but waiting to release just leaves potential revenue on the table. On the other hand, I think publishers are too focused on this bottom line issue and aren't taking customer satisfaction into account enough. And given the complexity of developing a AAA game and implementing a successful online matchmaking component, I'm sure there are many issues that arise after release that weren't present at all during pre-release testing. Some hiccups and glitches are unavoidable and unpredictable before release nowadays. Games are WAY more complicated and in-depth than they used to be. Combine that with publisher pressure to get the game out as fast as possible, and you have a situation like this.