Originally Posted by blatantninja
The problem I see more and more (and one of many reasons I wait a year or more before buying a game) is that companies are becoming, IMO, more and more cavalier about releasing games that are unfinished or have crippling bugs.

Which - imho - tells a lot about the publisher's greed.

Any publisher shoukld be aware of the fact that a buggy game

a) decreases the publisher's reputation
b) decreases the profits

but they just don't care. They seem to be content with the profits they earn from buggy games, although they would be abl to earn much more if the game hasn't been buggy (and that word would spread).

Plus, publishers often seem to take the underwhgelming sales of a game rather as a sign of bad gameplay than of buggyness. Regarding buggineyy, publishers just appear to be completely learning-resistant.

But the worst point is - imho - that they just don't care that pushed buggy games also damage the reputation and the profits of the developers … Publishers insist on the releast of "half-baked" games even though they do get the message that these games are half-baked !

Any REAL business would have to close very, very, very, very, very soon if following this kind of "business model" … For example the movie industry …

A movie is looking as if it is half-baked … You cannot tell that from a software-package …