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Delays, Delays, Delays
It's a constant in game releases: delays. There is news today of a number of games frustratingly being put-off until (in some cases) much later. Probably most shocking is news that Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is not going to be available for the PS3 launch. The title won't be available on Sony's console until Q1 2007. Somewhat less surprisingly, Half-Life 2 Episode 2 is going to be available in the summer, not in the spring. There's a raft of Xbox titles that have been pushed out to Summer as well. Forza 2, Shadowrun, and Too Human will not be available until June of 2007. Finally, the possibility for more frustrations for the often-frustrated European gamers. Via commentary on Gamasutra, a post on the Three Speech blog (a Sony organ) has Phil Harrison dodging the March launch for the PS3 in Europe. From Three Speech: "Given that all of our previous statements about launching in Europe simultaneously with the US and Japan turned out not to be the case, I would not like to make any definitive statements on that. It's not my job to comment on hardware supply issues other than to say some very smart people are working very hard to catch up. In fact, the ramp up is already starting to happen in supply and output, just obviously too late for us to have launched in Europe at the same times as the US."
I thought episodic content was supposed to cure the delay woes and reduce cost. 0/2.
Platform makers want the games NOW to help future platform sales. Game makers want higher platform sales NOW to help future game sales.
On the other hand, letting a product slip past the Christmas buying season should be worth worth two or three heads at any game company worth its salt.
. . .But I welcome these delays on the condition that when the game does come out it is truly better than it would have been without delays. . .
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
How many times do we buy a game the day it is released only to find out it really wasn't ready for production and was rushed out to meet sales? How many times does a Patch 1.0 come out with in the next month or two to fix it? And more importantly, how many times have you spent hours playing a game only to have it lock up and/or not be able to finish a mission because of a bug which then screwed up your other missions (i.e. ES4:O)?
For games, and more generally for software, I almost always put a self-imposed "delay" waiting for the first Patch to come out. It makes my gaming experience more enjoyable. I know because the times I've bought day 0 games, I've spent more time on the support forums reading how others have worked around their problems than actually playing the game.