• 23Nov 07

  About Bad Luck and Quality Standards.

  Since August 2007 I bought 6 games for my Xbox 360: Bioshock, Skate, Halo 3, The Orange Box, Call of Duty 4 and Mass Effect ( I know, too many shooters, but at least these are quality titles). Of these, 3 are limited editions (Bio, H3 and ME). Since games are sold 70$ for a regular and 80$ for a LE in Canada, which is to say that I spent around 450$ on games in the last 4 months, which a pretty good amount of money.

  Since this shopping spree began, I had my fair share of bad luck. It all began with the Big Daddy broken drill, then the much publicised H3 LE scratch discs problem. Then, a few days after I bought The Orange Box, my Xbox 360 disc drive just died on me. Msoft replaced it in only a few days (4 days from the moment I shipped the my console till the day I received the new one). the problem is they sent me one of the really, really old ones, manufactured back in November 2005. This means that it has a lot of problem, often not being able to read perfectly clean and unscratched discs, so I might have to replace it again.

  Then I bought COD4, and the disc was scratched so bad that it would load the next mission, halfway through the game, and this doesn't take into account the online problems with which Infinity Ward shipped the game. Note that this is also the case with Team Fortress 2 which is far from being stable and is ridden with lag issues.

  Now I had pre-ordered the LE of Mass Effect (I know, I never learn) and it was supposed to be delivered by Wednesday morning. Turns out that Canada Post has misplaced the package and that I must wait around a week to a week and a half until the "investigation" is complete and before they send me a new copy.

  Now, I know that there are worst problems than these in life, but since I work for this industry I'm kind of worried about the quality standards that we keep for these products. Shipping unfinished games that need patching on release, scratched discs for a product that you buy for 70$ (How come I never hear of widespread problems or scratched discs in the movie industry?), very, very badly manufactured consoles (I'm on my third 360 and among me and 3 of my colleagues, we had more than 20, yes 20 Xbox 360 because of RROD, dead dvd drives and such), and so on an so forth. That and shady business practice of "we only sell our LE on the web"... why? Well because Gamestop offered Bioware a fairly good amount of money of course, but it doesn't make it any better for the consumers.

  Also note that all these problems are related to products made by huge companies, who all make millions or profit every years. Microsoft, EA, Take-Two, Activison, Valve, etc. All these companies have more than enough money to insure good reliable products, in perfect condition, right out of the box, and sadly it is really not what is happening. The fact is that as a group of consumers, we got accustomed to such poor degrees of quality and we're not complaining enough and not to the right people. It doesn't help either that the biggest retailer puts every effort into it's marketing and doesn't consider customer service as being a part of it.

  I often read that our industry hasn't reached its full maturity and that this explains a lot of problems like the poor management in many studios, the unstable, to say the least, financial situation of some developers and publishers and the so called "lack of innovation" and the "game is not art yet" debate and whatnot's. But I'm not sure that this is so much a question of "maturity" as a question of orientation and directions. I know enough about high management and public companies to know that the higher ups don't really care about quality standards much, they only care about ROI's and margins and financial results.

  I certainly don't know the solutions to these problems, but I certainly fear that at some point, if we don't take our industry into our own hands, people will stop caring for unfinished and broken products and will just find something better to do.

  • Posted Nov 23, 2007 7:13 am PT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 18Oct 07

  Reliability

  So, I'm on a three months parental leave (yeah, Dads can have pretty long vacations too in Canada ). Of course this means that I'll principally be taking care of my son, Liam, who's totally awesome, and you know, do some boring stuff around the house.

  This also means that I should have plenty of free-time to play on my Xbox 360. I also got a DS and a computer, but I haven't gotten my hands on the new Zelda DS yet and my computer is crap, so I can't really play games on it. Anyway, like I said, I should be playing on my Xbox 360, lately I got skate, Halo 3, NHL 08 and the Orange Box, which should be more than enough to keep me occupied. the problem is my box failed me, once again, at the very start of my vacation!

  One day, I popped Halo 3 in my xbox and to my surprise I get the "Unplayable Disc" message. Now, I have one of those scratched Halo 3 LE disc, so I figured that the disc was at fault. But then, I tried my other games, and movies, and music CD's and I would still get the same message in the tray field!

  I looked on the net and discovered that this was a relatively common problem when the dvd drive just dies. It won't start and spin the disc at all (I verified and it's true, the disc doesn't move one bit). I was able to make it work again from time to time for another week, but afterwards it died for good. Microsoft sent me the damn shipping box and I sent it back to them, so they will give me back another refurbished Xbox 360 that will potentially crap out on me in a few months.

  So here I am, with over 300 dollars of new games (I also bought Bioshock when it came out, and a couple of Arcade games in the last, what, six weeks or so?), and I can't play any of it.

  As some of you may know, I work at Ubisoft. In my department, between 4 Xbox 360 owners, we're now at our 12th Xbox, maybe a couple more I'm not sure. At the very least, that 3 Xbox 360 per owners, which is a pretty high failure rate if you ask me.

  I may be stupid, but I still like the Xbox, I like the games, I like the product's performance (when it works!), I like the design of the blades, Xbox Live, etc. But for sure, I'm gonna think twice next time when MSoft put their new console on the market. I'll probably wait 2 years before buying one to make sure they get rid of the most important hardware issues.

  I understand that Microsoft is a software company, not a manufacturer, but with the kind of money they have, I expect that they put the best quality in their product, with the highest standard in the industry concerning the manufacturing process, and obviously, this isn't what happened here.

  Now I'll wait out the next few weeks playing on my DS a bit, on my original Xbox and maybe even a couple of games on my old Nintendo 64.

  • Posted Oct 18, 2007 6:57 am PT
  • Category: General
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• 9Sep 07

  What games are you getting this fall?

  Well I've just finished Bioshock, which is an incredible game. I'll most probably play it again in a couple of months but I'll take a whole different approach. I think it is pretty amazing that a FPS can offer easily over 20 hours of gameplay and replayability. Irrational Games have nailed it gameplay wise. They offer a wide variety of possibilities and introduce new elements continuously to keep the game interesting. This is why this game is a serious "Game of the Year" contender.

  Now on to my main subject: What games are you getting this fall? Personaly my list is all set:

  Skate: Never been a huge fan of Tony Hawk, but TH's competitor seems to be different enough and since I played the demo I just can't wait to get my hands on the full game. The controls are easy to pick up, the tricks are extremely rewarding, the camera is just right. This is gonna be the game to play with your friends online, just chilling and having a good time.

  Halo 3: It doesn't need any introduction, it IS Halo 3. While it may look like more of the same, it is a very good more of the same. I'm curious to see how the story plays out and I want to use those Brute Choppers.

  Orange Box: This is as much value for your bucks you're gonna get. Orange box contains HL2, plus 2 episodes and the long awaited TF2 and the intriguing Portal. Seriously, TF2, I'm probably going to make this my game of choice for multiplayer (yes over Halo 3 and COD4). The different classes and the importance they gave in designing each level for a specific match type is convincing me that it will be one of the best multiplayer game out there.

  COD4: After playing the multiplayer Beta,I just can't ignore how awesome this game is going to be, I'm must have it!

  Mass Effect: Probably the game I'm most excited about! Bioware never disapointed me before and I'm a huge SciFi fan, so what could possibly go wrong? I read the book and it's pretty decent too. I'm gonna put so many hours in this (for the record I've put over 160 hours in Oblivion so I can play a game to the death when I really like it). The story and the usually extremely good RPG experience of Bioware's game is a garantee that the game is gonna be awesome for me.

  Also, since I'm working for the company whose making them, I'll be getting Naruto, Assassin and maybe another game but I don't know which, could be Beowulf or BIA3, or even something else.

  Then 2008 will come and I will have a bunch of new games to try plus some 2007 games that I won't have time to play before then.

  My only concern now is where will I find the time to properly play all these games with a full time job, a wife and two kids at home? I guess sleep is overrated anyways!

  Now, what games are you getting this fall?

  • Posted Sep 9, 2007 7:16 am PT
  • Category: Editorial
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