Nothings going to change is it?

Another month, another broken unfinished AAA release. When is there going to be proper repercussions and/or quality control put in place to stop this crap from happening?

When it is not financially feasible.

When gamers stop preordering and buying from these trash companies and start buying from a copy with a proven track record like NINTENDO!

A lot of it comes down to covid and working from home.

Video games are not meant to be made from home and require gigantic endeavors, only small bits have to go wrong to have giant consequences. A lot of post-covid games seem to suffer the exact same issues one after another.

Besides the short sightedness of people in suits running things.

@moistcarrot: lots of questions that need to be asked. Both redfall and forspoken, let's not forget cyberpunk. The Jedi game. Callisto protocol. Really wierd times, the flop keep piling up.

@mesome713: you forgot pokemon disaster?

Feel like a broken record. It will stop whenever gamers don't reward it with money. So.. probably never.

You're probably right, but what's the excuse for all the pre-covid trash? Anthem, SimCity, Diablo 3, Fallout 76, etc.

Well I can only speak for myself but there’s definitely been repercussions from my end. Games that I was looking forward to but did not purchase have been:

- Fallout 76

- Anthem

- Pokémon Scarlet

- Cyberpunk 2077

- Star Wars: Jedi Survivor

- Callisto Protocol

- Forspoken

to name a few.

I do preorder games from time to time but have never been burned. Either I’m very lucky or my judgment is very good. Perhaps it’s a bit of both. 😅

@mesome713: Nintendo is the only dev I trust to buy games day 1 anymore... Maybe Platinum Games too.

The management at these companies are using data to determine when to launch a game. Production costs, marketing deals, the other games releasing in the same window etc are all factors in releasing a game. The folks at Xbox determined RedFall should launch now to maximize their returns. Same with the folks that developed that Star Wars game. CyberPunk. These broken PC ports etc. “Is the game ready” isn’t as high of a priority as you’d think. Once it is determined internally that the game won’t be a “AAAA blockbuster” title, they’ll gladly cut the game loose to move on to the next opportunity. Consumers have shown time and time again that they’ll buy/preorder garbage. And we also know review scores don’t really reflect commercial success. So in many cases, releasing a mess of a game, just to recoup the costs of marketing and development is deemed the best strategy, as crazy as it seems to gamers

Halo Infinite almost launched in 2020. They had fully deployed a marketing blitz before the game was delayed. I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like that. That was management and marketing pushing real hard to get that game out the door. It really makes me wonder what almost released back then… I‘m sure we’ll get a documentary on that someday.

Fortunately we got Diablo 4 coming in 4 weeks.

From the 3 betas I played, it ran very well on my rig. 120fps 4K Ultra 0 dips 0 stutters. No bullshit AAA game running well on day 1.

Nothing is going to change because everyone is chasing that Games as a Service/Battle Pass money and I think a lot of gamers are going to be in shock how badly games will shit the bed this year. Think Starfield, Avowed and Hellblade are going to be the next AAA-games to end up in the clearance bin one month after launch.

Thinking D4 will have no bullshit just seems naive at this point..

This is modern gaming! Of course it's not going to change.

Gamers keep liking up for those first day sales cementing the industry practice of being able to release unfinished games.

Publishers know how weak gamers are....

Personally, I'm enjoying the hell out of buying cheap finished games. It's been wonderful.

Yeah good point, doesn't seem like homeworking benefits collaboration when working on AAA games specifically. Wonder if they'll go back to strictly office working.

As long as it's on a rental service, people don't seem to care how a game releases.

From what I heard Forespoken or whatever bombed, so that's good.

Callisto Protocol, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, Last of Us PC are on which rental service?

I meant in terms of engine/performance. So many major studio AAA games this year have been running disastrous for both PC and Console. D4 is a breathe of fresh air.

As far as what you're talking about, I'm sure the servers will be fucked. 🤣🤣🤣

@zaryia: D4 is running on an in-house engine no?

Nintendo is the only developer who has never failed its gamers.

I saw something on Twitter that Microsoft wasn't particularly supportive of Redfall and wanted Arkane Austin to be done with it and move on. Supposedly from a French source that this came from Arkane Lyon. Seems contradictory to Phil's claims they'll support delays to improve quality. Then again there comes a point where I am sure publishers have to say they don't think continued delays will make much of a difference and they have to just release it already.

Kind of feel like there should be lots of questions though when Arkane Austin hasn't put out a title since Prey and it's expansion content. And this is what they came up with after 4 years. And this is the Arkane studio that gave us Prey.

I just don't see how Arkane Austin can just move on at this point. Seems they'll be tied down trying to improve the game for a while. Would have been smarter to just delay it more. Either way seems they'll be tied down a bit on this.

But, possible silver lining, I hope Arkane Austin feels pressured to play to their strengths, go back and work on a Prey sequel. Gets cracking on that ASAP.

ND should be shut down for releasing trash a couple months ago.

Engines get worked on and updated a lot of the time. So imagine working from home and you don't have the best of connections and have to download 50-100GB every day. Heck, I work from home too and sometimes downloading word documents off the server can be slow and painful xD

But yeah for example for BF2042 I heard how detrimental the working from home really was: a lot of the work you worked on yesterday for example could be scrapped because it wasn't compatible with the engine update today.

A lot of time is lost in the end. We'll see more games this year and perhaps even in 2024 that have suffered tremendously during COVID. And on the other hand we have games in full covid launching fine because they were made pre-COVID.

I know people are tired of hearing about the disease and are happy things are over with, but not all is fine in gaming land. And it'll take a while to recover.

But man, games launching broken and then the fix coming within two weeks to a month pisses me off beyond belief... Couldn't you possibly have oh I don't know, delayed?

Their hardware is getting outclassed by mobile phones.

80+ on metacritic is trash?

@silentchief: Yeah, all the mobile games just blowing Nintendo out the water...o wait...

The problems with Redfall seem to go beyond simply "not running well" so I actually expect to see this one punished with poor sales and lack of engagement on Game Pass.

think all Blizzard games use in-house one, with the exception of Heartstone that runs on Unity

1. Consumer is a docile sheep thick as pig shit

2. Morally bankrupt publishers who will literally go to court to justify gambling to kids as a fun toy if it threatens profits

3. Utterly useless gaming media who will happily ignore price and at best, give a tepid mention of horrific port quality

All in all, not much can do about other folk, so. It is what it is.

Yup.

We can start by not pre-ordering.

I would also, with some degree of bias, suggest buying independent and non-AAA games. There are a lot of options, many of which have better gameplay, creative ideas, and more than AAA publishers give us.

Nothing is going to change for MS that's for sure. They will continue to release sub-par experiences and their fanbase will keep taking it on the chin lmao.

No but it would be nice if I could enjoy the new Zelda and have it not look like it was made 20 years ago.

Gamers need to change if they want the companies to change. Make them earn your money and time. Stop pre-ordering. Stop buying day one and don't buy a game until there are trusted reviews and impressions verifying that the game is complete and not broken. Stop wasting money on micro-transactions, loot boxes, ultimate team packs, etc.. Games are being designed around this excessive monetization and the designs are going to shit as a result. It becomes about what will generate the most money and not about what is best for the game. Stop obsessing over loot in general. That shit is toxic. Most loot does nothing except increase DPS, armour rating, etc.. It's the same shit with a different number attached to it. It's not worth wasting money or time grinding for it.

The problem is the goodwill has evolved for MS customers. They stay subbed because they're banking on all the bs Phil spoon feeds them about 'quarterly AAA releases' and other nonsense. They literally sold the Series X on promises that are nowhere near being fulfilled.

Leave it Sony alts to make everything about MS and Xbox.😂

lol you think this topic was triggered due to Sony's latest game? Bu Bu But muh poor trillion dollar company!

The alt has identified himself but forgot about Last of Us PC.😂

As per ush. :P

The root of the problem is mostly due to UE still not in a stable condition which is why we're seeing most of the AAA games in a buggy mess and even few who aren't in UE, developers need more time if they aren't using UE, this is a huge problem and Publishers should be the one's in control to delay their games and truth of the matter is, they don't care, and only care about their investors.

You really like Pedro huh?

@davillain: yes he’s my favourite shill without a doubt

Things Phil Spencer said

Oh now we are talking metacritic? Quality doesn't matter I guess?

Metacritic rates games based off their quality. Naughty Dogs last game on PS5 was outstanding. Nobody is worried about the leftovers the PC got.

I can dig it.

Unreal Engine gets blamed unfairly most of the time because it is the most used game engine and that makes it an easy target. Games made with other engines have issues as well. The move to DX12/Vulkan requires more work from the developers when it comes to things like shader management. The problem is most developers use UE as an out of the box solution that they expect to do everything for them. They don't understand the inner workings of the engine, only how to use the tools. The tools are great, but developers can't be lazy and incompetent. They still have to learn and put in the effort to optimize their games.

Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, and other middleware solutions already do so much of the heavy lifting for development, but the developers have to take responsibility for their own games. They are the ones who chose to work with these engines and tools. They are the ones responsible for the overall quality of their game. Ultimately, the developers and publishers are the ones to blame if the game has issues. Don't blame Epic, Unity, Crytek, etc..

The worst is the publishers who are fine with releasing broken unfinished games, and the consumers who are dumb enough to keep buying them in that state. It becomes a brutal cycle. Consumers need to call out these bad practices. Let these companies know that this shit is unacceptable and most importantly, speak with your wallet. Don't support shit games. In the end it comes down to not enough fucks being given.

What if the consumers just do not care at all even after seeing all the flaws? After all, unlike dedicated gamers who do care about quality (e.g. people who post on this forum), most gamers see a game as a commerical product that is consumed and once they are done with it, move on to the next game. For these gamers, other things in their lives (job, money, taxes, rent, mortage, family, public safety, etc.) are more important than whether the games they play is of good quality or not.

@onesiphorus: Too many people don't care about quality and don't know any better. There is still a large portion of the population that don't even know what frame rate is. A game like Redfall will come out at 30fps, play like shit, and they will think everything is all good because they are seeing graphics on the screen. They are more influenced by marketing than the quality of the product itself. Again, not enough fucks being given. They don't care to learn about what they are consuming or if it is actually good or not. Casuals are the lowest common denominator and they are easily taken advantage of. Unfortunately, this ruins it for the people who do care about quality. When there are enough dumb-dumbs buying shit games, publishers will keep feeding them shit as they have no incentive to improve the quality.

Nobody's perfect, not even Nintendo.