Lately I've been getting incredibly pissed off with half-finished PC games being released with the intention of 'fixing them later.. maybe' with patches or 'upgrades'. This isn't anything new obviously, but it's just seeming really noticable at the moment.
Example 1: I bought Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance last week (after waiting two years for it to come out of a platform I own, since no GC version was forthcoming), so naturally I was pretty excited to play it. After installing it on 98 I was treated to a game which ran at about 15 FPS (this on a PC with a 2.5ghz processor and a ti4600). After searching around for a while, I find that Konami has stated the game will not run properly with a gamepaad in 98, even though a gamepad is recommended for play. That's some fine testing they've done on the final product <_< . However they also state that they 'may' release a patch in future to correct this. Well that's very nice of them.. In the meantime I've had to set up a dual-boot. Also during this search I find that the game won't even run on ATI cards without a patch.
Example 2: I don't know if these games are well-known over in the US, but they're pretty massive over here (250, 000 sold in the first week). My housemate bought the new one, Championship Manager 4, only the game was so buggy as to be unplayable. SiGames has since released 'enhancement packs' for download, which correct the bugs and bring some new ones with them along with the 'enhancements' - elements which were included in the previous games at launch, but they obviously couldn't be arsed to put in this time around, knowing that people would buy it anyway. Presumably this is because they wanted to get it out ASAP since we are right at the end of the current football (soccer) season, and they'd very much like for people to buy an update in about two months to accomodate the new season.
I'm sure I'm right in saying this wouldn't happen in any other industry. Imagine a film coming out where you paid to see it at the cinema but it had the ending missing, so you had to go back next week to find out what happened.
Example 1: I bought Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance last week (after waiting two years for it to come out of a platform I own, since no GC version was forthcoming), so naturally I was pretty excited to play it. After installing it on 98 I was treated to a game which ran at about 15 FPS (this on a PC with a 2.5ghz processor and a ti4600). After searching around for a while, I find that Konami has stated the game will not run properly with a gamepaad in 98, even though a gamepad is recommended for play. That's some fine testing they've done on the final product <_< . However they also state that they 'may' release a patch in future to correct this. Well that's very nice of them.. In the meantime I've had to set up a dual-boot. Also during this search I find that the game won't even run on ATI cards without a patch.
Example 2: I don't know if these games are well-known over in the US, but they're pretty massive over here (250, 000 sold in the first week). My housemate bought the new one, Championship Manager 4, only the game was so buggy as to be unplayable. SiGames has since released 'enhancement packs' for download, which correct the bugs and bring some new ones with them along with the 'enhancements' - elements which were included in the previous games at launch, but they obviously couldn't be arsed to put in this time around, knowing that people would buy it anyway. Presumably this is because they wanted to get it out ASAP since we are right at the end of the current football (soccer) season, and they'd very much like for people to buy an update in about two months to accomodate the new season.
I'm sure I'm right in saying this wouldn't happen in any other industry. Imagine a film coming out where you paid to see it at the cinema but it had the ending missing, so you had to go back next week to find out what happened.