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Should Companies Delay Products for More Features?
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece looking at if it makes sense for companies such as Sony to delay the release of products to ensure that when they do come out they are absolutely top of the line. From the article: 'In the tech world, where consumer trends can rise and fall and product cycles are short, that's more often the exception than the rule. The penalty for a delay can be severe -- even catastrophic. One of the biggest risks in postponing a product launch is being out-hustled to market by rivals.'"
If a company can show sales figures at a particular time in the fiscal year, it may be more of an advantage over the lag in release date. It is a balancing act that is dancing between marketing promises, top line sales, etc. There is more to it that quality and features.
Once I read an interview with an old school designer/architect(forgot the name). He said that when he was done with a product, he would start removing features. And if missing feature didn't make the product useless, it would stay off.
"The main holdups were a desire for absolute control over all the bits that will ever pass through a PS3's DVD player"
or: "the main holdup is greed".
Remember kids: copy protection is the symptom, not the disease.
As other posters have mentioned, the key to releasing a successful product is all about balance. As a product manager, I would love to be able to wait until the product has 100% of the specified features and zero bugs before we ship it.
That's just not feasible in the real world, though. While first to market does not necessarily provide an advantage, being las to market is a tough hole to climb out of. Additionally, there are always pressures to meet revenue expectations, especially in a public company. This is why I try, as much as possible, to define requirements early, to work with our engineering team early to get initial (and continually refined) estimates, and to know which features I can sacrifice when we get to crunch time and the product has to ship.
Having worked on both the software development side and the product management side, my impression is that most programmers and software engineers are not aware of the pressure to meet revenue targets. It is the reason (in a lot of cases) why the company exists. Waiting "until it's done," in many instances is just not feasible...at least if I want the company to stay in business.
It's "no one," not "noone." Who the hell is noone anyway?
There is a big debate going on in the gaming industry right now about accessability. When these things started out, we had a joystick and one button. Then it was a joypad and four buttons. Now we're up to a joypad, four face buttons, four shoulder buttons, three menu buttons, two analog joysticks, and two joystick buttons.
Put the controller in front of a new user, and they will have no idea what to do with it. Even advanced users are getting confused all the time as to what each button does. I've met hardcore users who never knew there were buttons under the analog joysticks.
Games themselves are suffering from the same thing. In a lot of modern games, you can use one joystick to walk, the other joystick to control the camera, one button to shoot, another to jump, another for a secondary fire button, another for magic, D-pad to scroll through inventory, L1 R1 to adjust primary and secondary fire modes, crouch, reload, etc etc etc. Put a copy of God of War in the hands of a user who has never played videogames before and you'll see how quickly they get overwhelmed. Or those wonderful PC RTS games that use every key on the keyboard as the interface palette.
It is the zipper vs bra-strap debate. The zipper has one of two possible states, up or down. If you're up, you can only go down. If you're down, you can only go up. It isn't very precise, but it works damn well. And it is generally in a highly accessable location, masked by a small piece of fabric. Bra-straps, on the other hand, have multiple possible states. Not only do they have multiple adjustment settings, but they also generally have multiple hooks with which to make those settings. They are in an aesthetically pleasing but utterly inaccessable area, and are difficult to interact with. If you absolutely need a perfect fit, the bra strap model is the way to go. But for nearly all things, a simple zipper is your best choice. We're suffering through an economy of gadgets that are using bra straps when they should be using zippers.
It is also worth pointing out that the Shuffle was available on the day it was announced. For all we know, it could have been delayed for two years for revisions. But Apple knows what they're doing, and has decided to get users excited about things they can actually buy, rather than making them wait for things they may or may not want a year later.
The ______ Agenda
This would be an version of "just right" that involves spending 6-9 months fixing bugs that should have never got past QA? I can't remember all the bugs I've hit so far, but the most recent one is hilarious:
u t-gender-in-oblivion/
My character was being used as bait for someone to ambush... the ambush springs, my backup leaps into action... At this point, two Imperial Guards come around the corner and start mashing my attacker as well. This makes me happy. Finally, they defeat my attacker, and start pureeing my backup. Eek, glad I didn't need them for anything important!
Beyond that; game balance is poor, and clearly intended that you play a combat-primary character. Playing a stealth-orientated character is a painful joke - sure, I can do 3x/6x more damage on my first hit, but I'm still being slaughtered by single opponents while travelling. This is particularly frustrating when I've just fought my way through HELL, got back, recovered, walk outside town and am torn to pieces by a passing WOLF!!! Other times I've become so bored of combat against a single, random encounter opponent, that I've just given up entirely on the game and done something else.
Oh, talking of balance: http://acidforblood.net/2006/04/09/the-debate-abo
In several places missions don't provide options that should be fairly obvious , or doors are plot-locked (*cough* Dark Brotherhood haven *cough*) because they couldn't be bothered dealing with a good stealth character breaking into them.
Did I mention that the entire stealth system seems to depend on your footware more than anything else? Not to mention, many places don't provide enough cover to creep around, or you are expected to deal with dodging guards that go in and out of zone breaks (as in, doors which do not open, but instead NPCs simply materialise infront of).
Oh, and you can't kill the plot NPCs, they're merely rendered unconscious, which makes the escort missions a joke. Although the fact that you can fast-travel while escorting someone doesn't really help that either.
Then there's the points where the game engine holds your character in place so you can't interfere while a character is killed (the start being the obvious example, but there are others).
Hmmm... found some weird stuff too... broke into the Imperial Palace, pulled a key off a guard, walked down to the entrance to the main chamber, and unlocked the door infront of the guard. Okay, I can accept he didn't stop me there, just about. So I pull my bow out, and try assassinating the head guy whose name escapes me now. You know what happened?
The arrow goes straight through his head, and sticks in the chair. He continues to ignore me. I empty a few more arrows into the chair, before finally realising that whatever I do, the game won't let me hit someone sitting down.
Personally, I'd consider Oblivion "barely acceptable" in terms of polish. If Bethesda didn't produce such incredible freeform, diverse games I'd have given up on them years ago. As it is, I'm mostly incredibly frustrated by the wasted potential.