Release & Patch Later Scheme

We all should be use to the infamous "Release & Patch Later" crap we see in games today. Developers and publishers need to start looking at Blizzard and Bioware Corp in terms of reaching quality and less buggy releases. Granted Blizzard & Bioware are not perfect but they nip the serious game stopping bugs out of their games before release.

Today's culprit is Creative Assembly's Empire: Total War Released back in early March of this year. Empire is great game but it's marred by bugs which some will not see until your part of the way through the game. CA continues to release patches and another update is expect soon with balance and more bug fixes. As complex as Empire: Total War is, how many frickin patches should it take to get a game right? I ask this question a lot when I'm frustrated during games.

Often times I give the developers and publisher the benefit of the doubt because stuff happens beyond our control that none of use gamers can comprehend. Publishers love to rush games onto the market to make a quick others take their time. My other issue is that it's impossible to create a bug free game and test it on every possible configuration known in the PC environment.

My Opinion: Do not develop a project that is over your head which you cannot understand. If you need to then make it cross-platform so you can optimize it then limit the amount of PC development time as possible. If you can get your game running flawlessly on the Xbox360 and PS3 then you can easily get it up and running on the PC as well. This would cut down on compatibility issues on the PC too because you know the technology and how it works and can tweak it specifically for PCs to avoid game breaking bugs.

So what will it take to get things right? Please send your responses too me via e-mail: drmrigger@gmail.com with the subject "Release & Patch Later Opinion". Your response could show up if I like what you say :)