The Problem With The Current Video Game Launching Trend

Now this isn’t going to be me, the gamer, sitting on my high horse complaining about games but instead a perspective on why it is games launch with non-working components and what can be done to fix it. Recently the gaming community has been spoiled with some great titles such as GTAV, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection however their launch was hardly a success, what did they all have in common? Game breaking bugs and server problems.

If you picked up GTAV on release day I’m sure you remember this error message or at least one of the many during the first few days of launch. The game’s online portion, which is the main reason many but into the franchise, was virtually unplayable. Same thing has happened more recently with Halo: MCC and it’s long load times, AC Unity with it’s frame rate issues, and COD AW with it’s crippling lag. Why is this? Well personally I think the reason is pretty obvious.

The current trend of game releases is as follows: game developers work hard to complete a game in a year, push it out around November with the numerous other titles, and hope to make enough money on day 1 sales before the game inevitably goes on sale for Christmas, rinse and repeat. The single biggest issue with game releases is that they are trying so hard to push a new game out every year before the holiday season. Developers are pressured with a deadline, usually in November, and if they do not meet said deadline they miss out on the holiday sales that make up a good chunk of the game market sales. However you may be thinking to yourself well by this point I would have already beaten and put the previous version of the game down so I need a new one every year. Well the fact is that if game companies didn’t try to pump a new game out every year before the holidays the games would be better and in turn last longer since they can put more time into them. Sure things like betas would improve server functionality but I can understand why devs don’t like to put out betas because it can ruin some of the surprise over playing the game for the first time when it releases.

So that is it. I think if we saw less games try and meet the November holiday deadline than we would in turn have far better, and working games. Plus it may even fix some of the summer game drought we are so used to seeing. To sum it up. Game developers are feeling pressured to release a game in time and push an unfinished product out before it should be released just to satisfy sales and that needs to change.

Written by: Spencer