Halo 3 In Stores On September 25th

Officially announced on the Bungie website (now with Luke Smith action), Halo 3 will be in stores on September 25th of this year. The multiplayer Beta for the game begins today; if you're looking for some answers they have an extensive online guide available for curious minds. MTV's Stephen Totilo had a chance to have some good chats with the developers, and he points out three things every Beta player should do, as well as a proposal for an unusual alternate scoring system for bad players. GameDaily has just a few more details, including some information on the tie-in Zune device Microsoft is offering to enflame fanboy passions.

Comments

zune tie-in

[suv4x4]

I love it when Microsoft pretends to be oblivious to the trends and situation on the market:

"including some information on the tie-in Zune device Microsoft is offering to enflame fanboy passions"

The subtle (or maybe not) stupidity of this struck me first when I saw the following list of options on the MIX 2007 video streams:

Stream live (Silverlight).
Download (WMV).
Download for Zune.

Great, thanks buddies! So although I have the latest ever WMP, the only option I have to stream it live is a crashing beta plugin that has no stable release out there.

But the funnier thing was the "download for Zune". You see, many sites offer "download for iPod" links. This is because a huge number of people have iPods. I guess in Microsoft-land, what matters is artificially push your product in tie-ins and integrating it in your sites, in the hope someone buys a Zune just to watch the MIX 2007 streams on the go.

The only thing they've proven so far, is Zune can't stand on its own.

Re:Most Expensive Game EVER

[EveryNickIsTaken]

You forgot - you have to buy a house to have a socket to plug the system into - so there's an additional $300k right there. Tool.

HOWTO: Software release disaster: Exact dates

[pslam]

I silently laugh every time I see someone propose an exact release date - sometimes even as ridiculous as morning or afternoon - which is 4 months in the future. Yes, software is so exact a job that you judge how long it'll take to write to within 0.4%!

To be fair, what's supposed to happen is you add on about 25-50% to your predicted hand-waving estimate, and when the release date gets near and you're running short of time, in order:

• Cut features
• Prioritize bugs - serious or very obvious cosmetic ones first (reviews always pick up on those), minor or cosmetic and hard to spot ones last. QA review board decides whether the remaining cosmetic ones are OK to ship with. Yes, people do ship with known bugs, but if they're rare or just minor glitches then it's better than shipping months later, and they can always be patched in the field. Note - I'm not talking about security products here :)
• Absolutely last thing - ask people to work extra hours for perks such as free food, extra time off or even overtime pay.

What really happens (from long experience) is actually, in order:

• Ask people to work extra hours for no return, which gets you very grumpy employees getting fat on pizza and losing their social life. Usually goes hand-in-hand with a deadline that was unrealistic when it was set 6 months before.
• Add extra features. Yes, when a product launch is looming, for some reason people always think up extra features to stick in rather than cutting them. Something is always a new must-have feature, and there is a disconnect in the brains of the management who ask for them.
• Start reclassifying serious bugs as minor. Reclassify minor bugs as cosmetic. Ignore cosmetic bugs. Cosmetic bugs are now features. There, no more bugs!

It pisses me off to see this happening elsewhere, and even more so when I realise this is just the way things are in the software industry. It's mostly run by people who haven't got a clue how software or QA works at all.