Thq bankrupt

Still, if people did go off being pirates, things like this won't happen.

 

And if people didn't pirate the companies could do whatever they wanted.
Of course the wallets would shut at a certain pricepoint, but what I learned from my latest visit to GameStop, is that that pricepoint lays well over 90$ for a single game, vanilla version. Which means that people will blindly pay the price set by the company.

 

This. See the human nature is based on routine. If the routine for these companies is pushing a half assed game out and still make sales guess what! They will keep pushing out half assed games.

 

Half assed is a relative term. We can't expect a game to be perfect, or even be glitch free when it comes out. I know I have the tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt, and a lot of my thinking here is based on reasonable assumptions, but developing a game well and on schedule has to be difficult. I guess it would be like writing an essay or something. You're writing it, and realize you want to go in a, even slightly, different direction. Then you got to go back and change what you've already done to keep it from looking sloppy. Even glitches can be difficult to handle before release, because a bug that occurs 1 out of every 20 times, and is missed by play-testers, could be a big problem after launch. This is all guesswork, but I try to keep my expectations mostly reasonable.

Also, there's a common misconception about game prices, that some publisher or whoever sets the price, and they end up sitting on profits. Games here in the U.S. are just as expensive, $60 dollars here for any new release. Here's an interesting article from Official Xbox Magazine about how that price comes to be: http://www.oxmonline.com/where-does-your-60-go.

Now, games developing probably costs a lot of money and time, and one game gives very little money to the company, so naturally, they need to sell many copies to meet that cost. And it follows that they would try to give the best product possible with their available time and money and talent. Do you think they think they are selling half assed games? I would say that no developer would say that their game is a B title, rather than AAA (unless maybe its just meant as movie tie-in, rather than intended to be good). Even if its Call of Duty (insert number here), consumers like the improvements or refinements that are made in each game (whether its in tech, mechanics, or just in the amount of ways to blow stuff up).

Sorry for the long rant. Its just that I see anger against game companies on every forum, and its always the same. There's always a feeling of victimization whenever a game does not turn out as expected, or has lots of glitches. Frustration with other humans' mistakes is fine, but the world's not against anybody.

 

Ummm

Ok, first things first, before the days of internet, Game Programmers had to try and make their game bullet proof before realsing them onto the market, now, back then, it was a very limited market without much profit to be made anywhere, Game Dev's pretty much worked for little profit overall.
Now, Some modern games have Day-1 Patches, this is one thing that hacks me off, DukeNukem3D worked from Day one for us, no Bugs, Tyrian2k, same thing, Highway Hunter, Same thing, no bugs, sure they were smaller games but they didnt have multi-million dollar teams and company's behind them. If your gonna make a game, dont push it though and have a Patch in the first week of the game...

 

Yeah, but games are alot more complicated now than they where before the internet (though that was sort of before my time). Perfection is an unreasonable expectation these days. Tech has improved a lot, but (while I am not a tech guy) I would guess that room for error would get larger when things get more complicated.

Also bugs may only get revealed after release. One thing that I know Bungie does, is they set aside time just for polish. Perhaps they iron out most bugs during that time. But Bungie is a pretty successful company. Maybe most other developers can't afford or aren't given much leeway as to how much time they spend.