This is not really news. I use to work on the build team at EA and later at MS Certification for builds and technical requirement certifications, not many games pass certification the first go through - which is a shame because it is so expensive to submit. And each fail requires a new submission, which costs the same as the initial submission, and adds at minimum 4 weeks delay.
It can end up costing the company millions of dollars between advertising having to be pushed back, keeping staff on for a month longer, working overtime, and resubmission. Very very very few publishers/developers ever reach platinum status company wide and even fewer have an average submission rating of 1 (as in 1 time to submit, first pass).
EA is one of the only publishers who has such status, even from my time at Microsoft. Most companies don't think QA is important and outsource it to 3rd parties towards the end of development. QA with companies like EA is integrated from pre-milestone (in concept phase) with a fully staffed team. Until game developers start seeing the value in QA we'll continue seeing a decline in game quality (it is insanely bad right now if you have been gaming for more than 15 years and can remember a time when games just worked).
Just think, I said EA has one of the highest submission ratings in the industry, and they were responsible for blunders like Battlefield 4 and Army of Two: 40th Day!
Gamers need to demand more, and it would be great if first party (Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo) would penalize companies that regularly fail submission compliance tests. I'd go so far as to say that both the company submission rating and the game submission rating should be printed on each game box so gamers can know, "Hey this company on average fails submission 3 times before success, but this game failed submission 6 times, I should probably not trust my money with this company."
In every other industry we do this, you certainly wouldn't buy a car that had the "lowest safety ratings in the industry" or "highest fatalities in its class" or "from the company that brought you EXPLODING TIRES." The auto industry has to publish their reporting for transparency, so should the gaming industry.
sense the manufactures take a 7-15$ cut of every game sold anyway, them charging you for certification is such bs to begin with, especially with patches that make some companies go "well the patch is simple, but would cost 30000$+ to patch it... so is the bug really that big a problem?"
i also remember a time when a game could fit on a floppy disc, its FAR easier to look through the code that takes up less then a mb, than todays.
and it would be great if companies penalized 3rd parties, it would drive them to a pc first and if we care the consoles attitude.
and as for the worst care in its class safety wise... i honestly don't care. if the car is cheaper because its less safe than i would still buy into it... and as a person without insurance, if i get into the kind of an accident where a high safety rating would come into play, i sure as hell dont want to limp away from it. id rather the accident kill me outright opposed to putting a crippling debt on my head where i would most likely kill myself to escape it later anyway.
Well whatever the reason for failed games after release, Zepid's comment makes perfect sense. And yes, I'm one of those who remembers gaming from 15-20 years ago (both PC and consoles) where you just purchase, install, and play with no problems. Over the past several years the increase of failures and bugs with games is just unreal.
My latest example: Grid Autosport on the PC/Steam version. The game has been patched three times since release a few months ago and it still breaks when doing certain things like buying/selling cars in the garage. The PS3 version has been broken for nearly two months and Codemasters has yet to at least attempt a fix for the PS3 version with a first patch.
And like Zepid said, we as gamers MUST rise up and demand more for quality and game releases. Otherwise, developers will continue doing things halfassed and/or outsourced. Delayed releases are frustrating to us all, but not NEARLY as frustrating as buying a game that is broken and waiting on patches which may or may not (see my example above) even fix everything.
like i said above, that 30k number was what indie games have to pay to patch a bug, i cant imagine what a major dev has to pay unless its exactly the same and even than, 30k is what, they would need to sell close to 8000 copies (depending on the cost and the splits) more to make up the cost to submit
personally, i don't care if my game is broken on release, because i'm not a moron and don't buy on release. patching a game shouldn't cost money, and the only thing that should fail a game is if they fail to save a game, or the game fails to load. if it costs nothing to patch, then we can get the fixes fast, and if the company still screws us, well dont buy their next game because they cant be trusted.
EA is one of the only publishers who has such status, even from my time at Microsoft. Most companies don't think QA is important and outsource it to 3rd parties towards the end of development. QA with companies like EA is integrated from pre-milestone (in concept phase) with a fully staffed team. Until game developers start seeing the value in QA we'll continue seeing a decline in game quality (it is insanely bad right now if you have been gaming for more than 15 years and can remember a time when games just worked).
I don't think there was ever a time when games "just worked". 1996 had games like Daggerfall, for example. Also known as Daggercrash.
thats a bethesda game... they have never in the history of the company made something that was bug free, so bad example, they also focus on open world... which is a bug nightmare as well.
Facebook
Twitter