What up ye Children of the ‘Axe?!?!? DK here kicking off another week of Member BattleCries where you can CRY HAVOC and LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD! This week we’re tackling a pretty hefty topic…GAME DELAYS! Unfortunately, they’ve become a fixture in the industry, and with the oft delayed Final Fantasy XIII FINALLY shipping this week here in NA, we thought it’d be a good time to explore the different scenarios where a delay has either helped or hurt a particular title. This is where you come in…We’re asking you to rob the memory bank for all its worth and tell tale of game delays that were either tragic or triumphant! Think back as recent or as far as you like and let us know about the games delays that most impacted a project you were, at least at one time, totally stoked for. With that in mind, I pose the following question to you in this week’s MBC Topic Starter:
WHICH GAMES HAVE BEEN IMPACTED THE MOST, EITHER POSITIVELY OR NEGATIVELY, BY A DELAY?
Of course, you can chat up a title from any era of gaming (if you can remember back that far), but please keep in mind that we want both POSITIVE and NEGATIVE responses…We’re not looking to create a bitch fest or warm/fuzzy here…We’re trying to get your input as we evaluate how game delays TRULY impact the titles we crave.
Just leave your Member BattleCry in the comments section below and check back daily to see the featured MBC on EpicBattleAxe.com. Of course, we’ll feature the MBC of the week on the next skirmish of the EpicBattleCry podcast and we encourage you to sound off on WHATEVER you want, even if it’s a bit off-topic. Oh yeah, don’t forget to vote in our poll this week which deals with your thoughts on game delays in general.
Alright, I gotta a ton of crap to do this week, but I’m really looking forward to checking out your thoughts on the whole game delay thing…Does it help? Does it hurt? Should pubs/devs even ANNOUNCE release dates before they KNOW it will ship (thus eliminating “delays” all together…)??? CRY HAVOC AND LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!!!!
Laterz,
DK
This might be a open goal answer to your question DK, but I personally think Splinter Cell Conviction has lost a lot of ground over the months or possibly even years that the game has been delayed, redeveloped, delayed some more etc. I personally even liked the previous look of Splinter Cell Conviction. Sam was all ruged up with a big beard, long filthy hair, etc. He looked like a man on the edge of life. And then they sended it straight back to the drawingboard.
I really dont know why they did it, but I thought that the game looked good back in 2007 (i thought it was that E3). So okay, revamp and restart the game and now it has been pushed back for like 2 times after they given a release date. Hell, even on one of the polls you guys did, it was said by a lot of people that they lost interest. Dont get me wrong, i like the new look, I still think its going to be a great espionage game with great gameplay, good story etc, but i have lost my pumped-uality about the game a long time ago. That really saddens me, to see such a strong franchise to lose peoples interest because of the delay after delays
My Battlecry goes to a game which its “delays” are already legendary, and that is Duke Nukem Forever (DNF).
This is the the type of situation where devs and pubs should just say “look, we are not releasing shit so STFU” instead of preserving the myth.
I know DNF never had an official release date announced by 3D Realms but with all the leaked material floating in the internet they might as well take it as the biggest free marketing campaign in video game history.
I want to get all fuzzy and all in regards to game delays, but I just think it’s a situation no dev/pub or gamer wants to be in.
If anyone is hyped by a franchise or original IP there’s no other option than feeling disappointed once the game announces a delay, and why wouldn’t we. People do care about their devs and games coming out of their studios, disappointment and nerd rage are signs of love and interest, that’s all.
So yeah, there you have it, Duke Nukem Forever is my rant, and suffering of nerd rage is the way I show my fuzziness to my beloved game devs/pubs
Cheers axe heads!
My Battlecry goes to the EPIC Holiday Game Delays of 2009, While all those highly anticipated titles like Bioshock 2, and Starcraft 2, Bayonetta, etc were delayed it is my opinion that these delays were good for these games. Thou it irked the gaming community greatly.
The delays have ensured that 2010 we gamers wouldn’t have a dry Q1, and Q2 like the game drought of 09. As for how it will affect the game sales, It is my belief that it wouldn’t affect the over all sales from fans of the series, where the sales will be lacking is grabbing those who are still on the fence.
New I.p’s like Beyonetta would suffer sales also, but I think that is because of it’s over hyped sexually driven ads and not from the delay of it’s shipment date.
Delays in the game industry are a double edge sword it helps but at the same time it hurts us all. we all know the pro’s and con’s of this terrible game.
Pro’s:
It gives the gaming community time to save up enough money to buy all the games that they want to play.
Gives the developers breathing space between releases.
Con’s:
Lost of sales, initial interest, lost of spontaneous sales “due to media hype”
TOO DAMN MANY! Dev’s and Publishers are delaying their games. (I can forgive a few delays through out the year because it happens and there’s nothing you can do in certain cases, but when everyone is doing it like it’s the latest hollywood trend, then it hurts our community over all.)
Well that’s my rant on todays delay.
my battlecry goes to games, namely in the fighting genre, that take an about a year to make it out of japan such as Tatsunoko vs Capcom and Dissidia: Final Fantasy, but use the time to fix what was wrong with the original version.
I will admit that a year is a very long time to get a game like this stateside, but I am always glad to see the result because when they take that damn long, they dont spend the entire time just dicking around. They spend the time making improvments to the gameplay and even adding new thing sometimes.
In the case of Dissidia, EX-Death was a ridiculously over-powered character, so much so that the japanese teir list consisted of EX-death at the top and then went down depending who had 1 or 2 moves that could get past is EX-shield. Thank god the international release was re-balanced.
In TvC, the Japanese version of the game had some overpowered characters and even worse an abundance of infinites (according to my friends who actually had the jap version). Capcom made the stateside version of the game actually more balanced and kept it fun, while they added some new features, we lost most of the great music from the original version and the animated cutscenes but Considering that the fighting got fixed and that’s what you really buy the game for, it is an acceptable loss.
Hey fellow Axe-men,
My positive ‘Game Delay’ MBC goes to… NINTENDO!
Because they actually make sure not to announce a release date if their game isn’t almost perfect and ready for shipment. Usually they announce release dates just a couple of months before release. So probably those awesome Nintendo games like Zelda get delayed internally several times, but we gamers don’t have to worry about it, and we can sleep comfortably, dreaming about our princess Zelda.
So I don’t care if the new Zelda is going to be delayed with another year of so, even if we would know about it, because that’s an IP that really deserves to only be released when it’s totally perfect.
My negative ‘Game Delay’ MBC goes to the game TOO HUMAN.
I actually have a lot of respect for Silicon Knights and the guild like model of their studio. Eternal Darkness also was an awesome game! However, I really believe that one of the main causes of Too Human not meeting gamers’ (including my own) and critics’ quality expectations, was the game’s continual delays. The game was first announced in 1999 to be released on the PS1, sequentially went to a release planning for the GC, and finally met its final real release on the 360 in August 2008. How can that have done any good on the game’s concept, game engine, story, design and game play? Apparently even US$ 80 million funded by Microsoft (Source: Wikipedia) couldn’t save the game.
See ya!
-PocketStation
My Battle Cry goes against Blizzard for continuously delaying Starcraft II. While I understand that WoW is their biggest moneymaker and its persistent online environment demands plenty of labor and resources, they should have released Starcraft II years ago!!
Starcraft came out over 10 years ago, and was one of the most important PC RTSs of all time. In its Countdown of the Top Ten Breakthrough PC Games, GameTrailers declared that Starcraft has since become Korea’s “national sport.” Whether or not they were exaggerating is besides the point.
Other Devs would kill for the fanbase that Starcraft already has!!!
The ultimate middle finger to fans was the delay of the Beta version last year.
Given the enormous hype that has built up with trailer after trailer (Protoss mothership!), Wings of Liberty had better be one of the best RTSs of all time, or else Blizzard will be forever haunted by the enormous missed opportuniy.
Greetings fellow Battle Sages,
I want to give my Member Battle Cry to FINAL FANTASY XIII.
Besides being delayed in order to allow for a simultaneous 360 release – which I think is OK, and great for 360 only owners – I really believe it was also delayed to let developers dumb down the game even more for the frigging ‘casual’ market. In fact, during interviews, producers and developers on the game even said that they wanted the game to be more ‘accessible’. I hate it when THAT happens! Just look at the last Prince of Persia. I was so looking forward to that title, but ultimately I was disappointed when I got my hands on it. Do they really believe such strategy is going to let them sell more units of a game like FF? Would Gears, CoD or Halo have sold more if they were more ‘casual’? If Square-Enix is so eager to sell FF games to the casual market, then why don’t they develop a frigging fitness, sports or J-pop music game for the Wii, featuring the lovely ladies of FF in overly small bikinis?
I’ve been a life-long fan of Final Fantasy, but FFXIII is the first installment in which I already lost interest before its release. I was disappointed with number X as well, but Square-Enix made things right again with FFXII. Now after reading the Edge verdict of XIII – after 22 years of gaming I found out that the Edge review is the best proxy of my own game experiences and verdicts – I’ve totally lost faith in this franchise for now. Maybe Square-Enix should just do the right thing, which is either getting Hironobu Sakaguchi back on board, or doing a game together with BioWare in order to make the ultimate ‘glocal’ RPG!
Peace,
The one and only ‘God of War’
I’m a big fan of the “it’ll be released when its done” idea that blizzard frequently says, even though they are lying through their teeth (ill explain in a sec) it makes sense for a lot of companies to release when the game is as good as it can be so they don’t get bad press for a buggy release. I remember when this only used to happen on PC games but with console games now having an update feature it seems to be happening more and more (bayonetta got some serious bad creds on the PS3 cos they didn’t include the hard drive install feature from the start, and added it via update).
As for the Blizzard lie, they have finished Starcraft II I’m almost certain of it, or if not they aren’t working too hard on it because it will take customers away from WoW. Would you prefer to get $12 or however mush it is now a month for free (or just for fixed costs) or get a lump sum of $60 and then nothing from then on. They like the free money and they aren’t going to release SCII until that cools down a bit.
But releasing Starcraft II doesn’t mean that Blizzard has to suddenly stop maintaining the persistent online environment of WoW. Nor does the revenue potential end with the retail release of SCII and its expansions.
The DLC possibilities are endless, and they could even charge a subscription fee for online support just as they already do with WoW. Online support for SCII wouldn’t be as large as the support for WoW because they wouldn’t need to constantly create quests or modify the universe.
Even if a subscription model deterred half of the current install base of Starcraft, Blizzard would still have an appalling number of potential customers, all of whom are not being catered to. This is even more appaling given the state of the RTS market. If they released SCII today, the early sales would blow away any competing RTSs, even if it turned out to be mediocre (BTW, I hope it will be awesome).
I think that delaying a game is justified as long as that game is delayed in order to give the developers more time to make the game better.
Even though I haven’t played it yet, I think that Final Fantasy 13 has benefited from delays. Judging from review scores and general feedback, the game seems to be great.
Delays probably don’t matter as much for established franchises (Halo, Zelda), because people don’t care when it comes out, they just want to play it.
Possibly the best result of a game being delayed would have to be Resident Evil 4. Not only did it result in another awesome little series called Devil May Cry, the near perfect final version of Resident Evil 4 itself completely refreshed what was becoming a very stale (and silly) franchise.
A lot of people were disappointed in how different it felt from any other Resident Evil game, but in many ways, it was for the better. Capcom threw every annoyance the series was known for out of the window: from the tank controls to the stiff combat, to the fixed camera, to the annoying as hell door cut-scenes. It took guts and a long-ass time to make that happen and probably a lot of major revisions. Those were obviously done not because Capcom were struggling to complete the game; they were trying to perfect it.
Now, it’s not my favorite game of all time or anything but having replayed it recently, I’m still amazed by its quality. No matter how deep you are into it, it refuses to turn anything into a grind. There will either be a new type of foe, a wicked sub-boss, or a particularly cool sequence waiting after each loading screen. I seriously doubt that one could achieve such an amazing pacing without the time it took to make the game.
Game delays and set backs suck we all know that. I think gamers have become a little too critical of developers.
Please everyone speak up….HOW MANY OF US HAVE DEVELOPED OUR OWN GAME.
I am thinking that even if we were all in a room it would be so quiet at this point we could hear a gay man fart.
With that being said this crap happends and it sucks but it is part of the beast we all know and love. Instead of sitting here talking about how delays have messed up games. How about how delays have probably saved us from wasting money on B.S. products. I remember reading a article in game informer about a title called BORDERLANDS. I wanted to play this game so bad it was one of the coolest things I had read about in a long time. Know what happend next they scratched the project took it back to basics and redesigned the whole game. In my opinion it came out being maybe the best new series of the year.
I love video games and I wish we were all lucky enough to have a massive title like god of war III or mass effect 2 or Modern Warfare hit every month. Reality check we dont. Why because those games take so much TLC and Time and resources. Think about musicians like the really great ones they dont release a new album every year. They write about 40 songs per album and pick about 15 to actually put out. Making games is a art like anything else. Great art takes time and not to over state the obvious but umm people come on “SHIT HAPPENDS”. Ill play slinter cell conviction I dont care if it comes out 2 years from now and anyone who says they wont play a game because they lost interest in it because it wasnt released when the powers that be said it would is completely full of crap. How many of us are going to play FFXIII. Anyone who is has been a fan of that series thats who. Thats universal.
So everyone just needs to chill out throw a classic title in pop a beer and just wait for the good stuff to be put out. It usually all shows up. Get off of the developers asses how about saying thank you Mr. Developer for taking the extra time to make sure this game is actually worth my hard earned cash. That your not blowing us away with game footage and CGI only for us to get it home and go Holly CRAP BATMAN this game sucks. Seriously when did gamers become such pre-madonna’s.
My Epic Battle Cry goes out to Gran Turismo 5 for it’s epic amount of delays. This is not a question of whether this game will be better because of the delays, of course it will, this is about Polyphony Digital simply abusing the status they have obtained over the years. It’s possible that with the 5th official entry in the series, over such a long stretch of time, the series has become way overrated.
Case in point Gran Turismo 5 Prologe. I know it’s been a long time since it’s release, but that’s exactly the point. This demo was supposed to give fans a taste of the final product. But now GT5P and the final game look nothing alike, the improvements have been massive. By selling consumers the demo they were able to continue development for years because they had that source of income. I want to know how you guys feel about this, should consumers have to cover the development costs, and then buy the game all over again. I think it’s bullshit!!!
Last generation a prologe version and selling demos was acceptable because there was no suck thing as an online demo or beta for console games. You bought demos in magazines and so selling a larger demo like prologe to previous Gran Turismo games was fine. Now things have changed, you don’t have to sell the demo of GT5 on a disc or digitally, it should come as the beta. Because they want consumers to try their product and give them feedback. Put that effort into finishing the game and getting it to your user base.
And calm down PS3 fanboys, I’m only calling Polyphony out because like you, I’ve wanted this game for a long time.
Upon hearing the recent episode of epic battle cry i think that the delay of titles can help a game in a way but depending on the size of the game, the genre of the game, the audience in which a game is aimed at but also the way that mechanics in a game work .A game that got delayed and had an impact on the final product which could be Gran Turismo 5, that game has been delayed so much that sony had the nerve to market a game which was only 25% percentage of the original game, Gran Turismo 5 prologue and yet can still release time trials and shit on the playstation network but can’t even give a freakin estimate of a release date or admit they can’t complete a game that been in devlopment for so many years, yet this is over a game where you drive around a fukin track HOW IS THAT SO DIFFICULT AS IF THEY HAVEN’T SPENT ENOUGH TIME PISSING FANS OF THE SERIES OFF!, im not a fan of the series so i couldn’t give a shit
When talking about delaying a game, it really depends on the reason of the delay. There are games that didn’t need delaying and still got major delays and games that could have used one and never got it. Talking about the prior, the best example is TLoZ: Twilight Princess, in my opinion one of the weakest Zelda games ever created, hyped like the second coming of Christ or in other words like The Phantom Menace and sucking ballz. Twilight Princess would have been an excelent 2005 game, and instead turned out to be a mediocre 2006 game.
On the contrary, when speaking of games that could have used a delay, we can take every single rushed game on the market today. Games like Dark Void or Red Faction Guerilla suffered greatly of lack of any real fun in them, just because they were almost trowed in game stores for making a quick buck.
My point basically is, that developers need to have a solid reason for delaying games. If it means that the delay wil actually improve the product, than go and freakin’ do it. The problem is that game makers don’t use delays effectively and often don’t know if they need them or not.
Recently I heard a lot of people bitch about Final Fantasy XIII, with all of the delays it had and like it’s kinda stupid, linear and basically not interesting. I was never a FF fan, I have played 2 games in the entire franchise, thinking that JRPGs are kinda dull and uninteresting, but in my opinion XIII is one of the best RPGs I have ever played. It’s fun, kinda melodramatic, but still interesting, engaging with beatiful graphics (and I play the 360 version, just in case you wonder). This is one of the most spectacular games I have played in recent history, and that means a lot thinking that I just beated the 2 KotOR games recently. In my opinion, this game deserved every single delay it had, because AT THE END OF THE DAY, it turned out to be one fine piece of awesomness.
Cheers.
Much love,
iastreb93
My BattleCry goes to Project Natal. I strongly believe that if the gizmo can do even half of what it has been promised to do, we will see some major entertainment industry changes. But wait, I don’t mean that every damn game from now on will be played via jumping up ‘n down like a cheerleader monkey. The changes I can see coming will impact game DEVELOPMENT.
One of the biggest gaps between major game developers and indie ones has been for some time the lack of motion capture; You can do wonders animating stuff by hand, but it doesn’t really compare to actual movement recorded digitally unless you invest ungodly work-hours in it. An example; Pick up almost any Mod out there today. Even the ones that look like the Next Crysis in screenshots become apparently amateurish the very second you see a humanoid character move – the animations are either unnatural or recycled from the main game. I’m not blaming the teams, it’s not the the team’s fault if they can’t afford to build their own mocap studio or hire one.
However, if Natal is even remotely accurate, even all the lag in the world can’t stop it from changing how things are. Since it’s X360 hardware, it is by nature PC-compatible. All it takes is a dedicated modder team to build an OpenSource recording software – and then anyone can do MoCap animation. Anyone.
Right now there is a whole sub-industry of MoCap studios dedicated to this singular purpose, and they doing it very profitably. Natal might single-handedly crash that industry by making it almost irrelevant. While they still have professionals with experience, none of these companies can offer price points able to compete with 50-250 USD Natal – and price of orange jumpsuits.
Necrophilissimo (of PenguinDT)
My battle cry goes towards delays in general. For example would be blizzard and Starcraft 2! This game has been delayed and delayed but knowing blizzard its gonna be a good game and the delaying is just making shure the game is good. An example of when delaying sould have been used would be Danteys Inferno, which is not a “bad” game but a delay probably would have fixed some of the things like being able to diversify the enemies and overall make the game better. Not saying that all games need to be delayed but the developers really need to decide on weather or not the delaying of a game would really be in the best interest of the gamer (like that would always happen ha).
Ares,
You just read my mind.
Especially the idea of a joint BioWare/Square-Enix ‘Glocal’ RPG is just really great.
-PocketStation
a game that negatively impacted me because of delay was damn splinter cell conviction. I first thought it was going to be a open world game because of the first trailer and I said this will be sweet then as time went on I waited for 2 years for a new trailer then e3 2009 or 08 then i get a cool game but it changed the whole thing in the newer trailer and i still want to play it but like the last time they delayed like in February or January then I say we waited to long the game looks done so release it already ubisoft and I swear to god ubisoft if you delay the new assassin’s creed your company will be screwed
Delays from a gamer standpoint can only be hurtful. We have no idea how good, or polished, a game is until it comes out so a delay to polish it up makes no difference on us. Now obviously a game that is awful should take a delay to polish itself up, but how much better that makes the game we do not know. However delays do help us to lose interest in a game. Take Alan Wake for example, i stopped caring a long time ago. I remember hearing about Alan Wake when it was announced 5 years ago when it was planned to launch on Windows Vista, and what looked interesting to me then now interest me almost as much as anything made for the Wii that isn’t from Nintendo.
And since almost any time a delay occurs we believe it is to polish the game more so it makes our expectations even higher, which is not a good thing. We expect the game to be even better than we did before it was delayed because the delay HAS to put in place to improve, which I have no doubt is true. But expectations are so hard to developers to reach and making them higher is only going to make what we think of a game worse.
My EBC for this week goes out to a great game that was made better for its delay(s), Super Smash Brothers Brawl.
Masahiro Sakurai and his team spent years working on it and another year polishing it, much to the dismay of Wii owners everywhere. Every time we reached a 2 or 3 week pre-release date, it was pushed back another few months and everyone complained. However, I see the light in this.
The main reason they did it was to tighten up the online play, and would Brawl have been as good as a title without it’s flagship new feature in a working condition? No way at all, but because they took the risk and tried to get it just right (and came pretty close) they deserve a round of applause for an excellent job done. Oh, and an unstoppable 60 FPS is a nice polish too.
Finally…This is a topic I’ve been waiting for, and though it’s not very original, I gotta give my battlecry to the Zelda franchise.
Twilight Princess in particular was delayed a good amount of times thanks to its Wii transfer and reboot of the Twilight’s environmental effects, yet Nintendo was smart after announcing several delays that almost added up to a year. THEY CONTINUED ADVERTISING! Nintendo continued to leak out video after video and screenshot after screenshot of this game. In gamer talk: they kept the hype train rolling. The game received very good reviews. So, it all boils down smart tactics and thinking on your feet when delaying a game.
Also, last year, a few delays were announced so that Modern Warfare 2 wouldn’t take away sales from games such as Bayonetta. I gotta say, this was a somehwat smart move. Though the games that held tough against MW2′s opposition received great sales, can you imagine if a few more games were added into the mix?
I believe that Final Fantasy XIII has suffered from its numerous delays. I understand the port to the 360, yet I also understand that what they showed us a few years ago is no longer as incredible as it once was. When releasing all new footage, gamers get excited about the game. When you continue to show that footage for 2 years after delays, then start explaining a battle system that’s two years old…is it really going to hold up to other games released in that two year window? My point is, the industry changes and adapts quickly. New ideas can become old ideas very fast in games, which is why delays can also hurt a game if done too often.
I’d like to make a cry out to Hideo Kojima. I know the topic is about games being delayed, but with his apologies some time ago, I think he truly took a step forwards and did the right thing. Truth is that NO game gets better with a delay because we don’t know the quality of that game. As gamers we have the rights to be angry about delays, if these mega publishers want our money they need to meet us halfway and release games on the given date. Kojima went through a lot of trouble to tell everyone patiently waiting for his game that he was terribly sorry and my anticipation for Peace Walker blew through the roof. It’s a nice change when a developer who has the rights to go all “James Cameron” on us, treated their loyal fans and consumers like adults.
Ending note, I don’t mind delays if its for the better. However I don’t like always being treated like my purchase doesn’t matter to them (even though I know that it usually doesn’t).
My Battlecry goes out to the creator of this website http://duke.a-13.net/ relating to the most delayed game in history Duke Nukem Forever. The website charts the history of the games development (or rather the clear lack of it) but then goes on to talk about someone who pre-ordered the game as well.
Most hilariously there is a list of various things, from fun facts relating to the internet to a list of World Events which have taken place since the game was first announced.
My Battlecry goes to this guy because he shows both a good side and bad side to delays. It’s bad because it catalogues the pathetic trail of BS from developers/publishers that gamers have to put up with but it’s also good because it shows us that rather than focusing on one games delays, we can focus on the games being released (I believe Brent pointed this out when talking about the Red Dead Redemption delay)
- Knight!
None. As far as I am concerned delays are nothing more then speed bumps on my road of gaming, something that I think about only when its coming up but after I have past it its nothing that I need to look in my rear-view mirror for. I never go back and think “I am so glad this game waited another 3 months before coming out.”
Granted it might help if I bought more day one releases.
My battlecry this week is off topic, and goes out to free browser games like Tribal Wars and Travian.
I’m sure these games will be love or hate games for most people, but Ive been playing them on and off the last few years, and allways seems to get sucked back in.
They both have a slow start, and simpel graphics. But when you start building your army, and raiding other players for resources, the fun begins.
Join a clan and go to war!
So if you spend time on your browser everyday (at work maybe) give it a try.
But take the speed servers and remember, there is allways a bigger fish..
My member battlecry goes out to Alan Wake. Some people have said that the delay killed any excitement for the game but that is something that this dude abides!
Interviews with Remedy have shown that when it was announced they were working on a sandbox game, something that they have admitted now was a mistake. Instead of powering through with a bad idea they changed it, adding to the development time but ultimately making what looks to be a far greater game.
I can’t wait for the game to come out and look forward to playing a polished thriller and do not resent in any way not having the game 2 years ago which by all accounts may have turned out awful.
Keep up the good work guys! Look forward to the podcast!
My bipolar battlecry goes out to Bizarre Creations for seeing possibility in a niche minigame and has since polished it into some of the best and most addictive twitch gameplay on the market. I am, of course, talking about Geometry Wars (the third of which – Galaxies – I have recently found myself re-addicted to).
Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, seriously, what the hell is wrong with you Bizarre? I understand why only your topmost score is shown on Xbox Live, or on the DS’s WIFI, but how hard would it be to support a local-only leaderboard? At it’s heart, Geometry Wars IS an arcade game, much like Space Invaders or Pacman that came before it. Prettier? Hell yes. Any less influenced by simply getting a better score than other gamers? Hell no. Imagine how unpopular ANY arcade game would be if it simply showed the top score, and that was it. I’ve been playing since the first game came out, and as a poor replacement for digital stat-tracking, I’ve had numerous dry erase boards taped above my tv just so my roommates and I can keep up with who’s leading the household.
Please Bizarre, eventually come out with a fourth Geometry Wars, one that has all the game types from all three of the games, even prettier trippy graphics, and please, above everything else, local leaderboards.
Here’s my Epic Battle Member Cry,
I really prefer to see a game delayed so they can work on it a litle longer so we, as gamers and customers, get a better and more refined experience. The problem, as the last choice of the poll says, is that publishers shouldn’t announce a clear date when they don’t know if they’re gonna ship in time.
The best example of how to do it is, God of War III. Announced for MARCH 2010, in June 2009, they gave themselves a large window to see if other games could make them change their idea or if the developpement went faster or slower than supposed. I also feel that if God of War would have been delayed, because the date wasn’t set in stone, it would not have been taken so harshly by the community.
The counter-example, is Splinter Cell : Conviction. How to completely destroy momentum. The game was awaited for so long. They released a trailer this winter where it the release was dated for 23.02.10. The whole point of the trailer was to say the release date. Now, the codeofconviction.com thingy (which I participated in) helped us get the real release date as for April 13th. After 5 years more or less of developpement it really didn’t need that. Shame on marketing or the developpement team for that bad decision. We’d better get our cash out of that game or else you’ll have a line of frustrated gamers ready to NOT buy another Splinter Cell game as they will have lost their faith on the franchise.
Finally, the positive affects are mostly unappreciable by gamers as we will never get to understand the amount of polish that was made during the time of the delay (of whatever the game was actually delayed for). It’s mostly intengible. This is why we see so much delays as a bad thing.
The negative effect is mostly dangerous for smaller franchises or new IPs. God of War III and FFXIII will sell as much on March or on April. It could sell well in Christmas time, Easter, Halloween, etc. People have confidance in their developpers and know they’re doing the right choice. Alpha Protocol (sorry Daniel), as much as they can delay that game, it’s not looking too good. I’d be happy for SEGA if they get a 85 from critics. The game looks clunky, the style seems weird, caracters empty, and delays won’t change that. As said, we haven’t been conditionned to think SEGA will release triple A titles.
Finally, my Battle Cry is in fact to developpers who have to make the heart breaking choice to make these delays happen or not. Will you break the momentum to make a better game? Can think of what I would do I such a position.
My MBC goes out to big pointless delays.
Delays can be good or bad depending on the reasoning for them. For example, the games that had to find cover from the MW2 tactical nuke release and move into Q1 of 2010 only did so (in my eyes) for better marketing. From a gamers point of view, this is a bad thing because if i want that game, i will get it. The delay just has me waiting for something i want for no real reason, and over that time period i genrally loose hype for that game and invest interest into other games.
Obviously your good delays would be those that really enhance the game, a good example would be after a public beta, working hard to shape the game on recieved feedback. This would definately benefit the game and i would have no problem with the delay.
If the game had no release date released then i wouldn’t get my hopes up to be knocked down by a delay.
So what i think deveopers should do is set themselves a release date, this way they will work hard to finish the game without falling behind the evolving standards of games (like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. did, by the time it came out the graphics were way behind) But also not to release a date to the public so they are not pressured into rushing the game to get it out in time (cutting parts out that had potential, cramming uneeded chunks in to fatten the game up).
Thanks for reading and looking forward to the COLLECTORS EDITION AUDIO ONLY PODCAST next week !
There are two sides of the coin when talking about game delays. They can either positively or negatively affect the end result for a video game. Generally speaking, I believe that game delays can do nothing but hurt a video game. The more time that a game is in development, then the more stale the game’s mechanics become. A truly innovative idea during development could become something that is par for the couse down the road if the game is delayed for a large amount of time. This takes some of the excitement away that comes with a game release. However, there are those rare cases where delays actually benefit a game. That is why my battlecry goes out to Borderlands. I first read about the game in Gameinformer, but that was a long time ago. Develop Gearbox took a risk by delaying the game and drastically changing the mechanics and visual art style of the game. However, it paid off in the end because Borderlands looked great and was an intriguing combination of FPS and Role-playing elements. Borderlands went on to become one of the best games of the year. In this case, a delay helped a video game instead of hurting it.
My Battlecry goes to OnLive. Okay so OnLive is coming out in june and you pay $15 a month for a subscription fee? 15×12=$180 a year? and thats not even including buying or renting the games which then get added on to your bill at the end of the month. say you buy 4 games for the whole year thats $50 each plus the $180 thats $380 for the whole year. I don’t know about you but I paid for my 360 once not over and over again. Some people complain about paying $60 a year for LIVE? compared to OnLive’s pricing I think paying for XBL is a better deal and you have a physical copy of your game most recently there have been problems with connecting to PSN or whatever like sometimes XBL is down for maintenance… so what I have the disk I can play offline (single player) but with OnLive when they are down everything is digital so you’ll have to wait for them to fix the problem to play again and on top of that I don’t know about you but I have a high speed internet connection( more like on level higher than basic high speed) and I have a bandwidth limit how knows how much of that takes up streaming 1080p games?
my Battlecry goes out to two games, one of them was delayed for the better, and the other for the worse.
the first game is Splinter Cell Conviction, when i first heard of this game, i honestly didn´t give a crap about it, but because it´s been delayed for so long, i have become more and more hyped for the game, because i over that time period, started liking stealth games more and more.
the other game is Dark Void, i was personally really hyped for Dark Void, and even after it got delayed, i was still hyped, but then when i heard the reason behind the delay, it completely turned me off, i mean if your gonna make a third person shooter, with a jetpack, it shouldn´t take you long, to figure out that a hover feature would be a good idea, then they released a demo of the game, and that´s when i completly gave up on Dark Void.
Alright my Battle cry goes out to two games, one whose delay helped it and one whose delay killed it. First off, Resident Evil 4… Thank God it was delayed. The first screenshots that came out for the game closely resembled the cramped, irritating camera angles of the first along with the outdated control scheme. Then, Capcom, in their infinite wisdom, decided to halt production and go in a completely different direction, leading to the greatest survival horror game of all time (that’s right, I’m saying ALL time).
The next game was literally killed by its delay was Starcraft: Ghost. This was going to be a departure from the original with third person views and even released numerous photos, appearing as a feature in Gameinformer even. I was psyched for this game but then it got delayed. People lost interest and it lost funding. Eventually, the project was buried and a potentially awesome game never saw the light of day. This a prime example of showing the game too early and letting the hype fizzle out, losing the market, and getting axed.
My battle cry goes out to Gearbox Software and Borderlands. They took an extra year to transform a linear, blandly realistic loot-shooter into a comic-styled, humorous, and eye-searingly memorable co-op killfest that I’ve put 87 hours into and am still playing with my friends.
It was a year well-spent. They added a fourth character. They added side-quests and farmable instances. They turned the Unreal engine into something unrecognizable. But, most of all, they added a whole lot of badditude to the game that makes it a joy to play with my gaming crew. Major props to Gearbox for realizing an original hit IP with flair.
My battle cry goes out to GTAIV.
I was SOOOO hyped for that game, and when it got delayed it felt like a cheap shot… I mean, how long was it delayed for? like 6 months or 9 months or something! After the trailer looking so good, to have it delay without reason sucked.
And then it hit. October 19th. Got my copy.
It’s never been under more than 1 game since, and the two DLC’s proved just how well they had crafted the city and story originally, allowing multiple avenues of time to branch out, yet still feel completely cohesive and immersive. An epic achievement, amirite?
YO!
My Daisies of Disappointment, My Luigi’s of Letdown!
How art thou!
Ok that felt stupid. I think I’ll let let Brent stick to those for now, and I’ll just get on with my battle cry.
As for a negative delay, I would need to go for the obvious and say Half Life 2: Episode 3. Wasn’t HL2 E2 released in 2007? Portal 2 is cool and all, but it’s coming up on 3 years now, and that is a monumental development time for a 3 hour game.
As for a positive delays, pretty much anything made by Blizzard or Nintendo. The worst games made by either companies has to have been a high 8, the only glaring exception being any game with Wii slapped on it. I like the we will release it when it’s ready ideal, and I have plenty of other developers who do meet there release dates(I’m pretty sure my body has developed an internal call of duty timer by now).
That answers your prompt, but I would like to display my own food for thought as well. It’s something you guys talked about in last weeks episode.
I’d like to note how we don’t really own our games nowadays. I love to go back and play older games, particularly my N64, but I fear my newer videogame collection will end up a useless pile of plastic.
Like Dk’s aweful puns, my concerns come from many angles and are getting progressively frightening.
About a year ago, I bought Fable, Indigo Prophecy and Bad company 2 off of Xbox live games on demand. Recently, I was stuck without internet access and much to my dismay, I couldn’t play those games when I’m not logged onto Xbox Live. That’s bullshit. I payed for those games, I should be able to play them when I want to.
I’m also aware that PS3 fat owners were locked out of PSN for a short time recently. I own a slim, and I’m not 100% clear on every fact, but I believed that prevented many games from being played at all.
Then there are games whose servers close down. EA shuts down there servers for madden way too soon and although I am not a particular fan of the franchise, I’ve got friends who buy it every year, and play it religiously. I am a huge fan of Halo 2, and It makes me want to crie when I hear all of the original Xbox servers are being cut. It was the first game I ever played online to a significant extent, and it was the center piece of countless parties over the years. Further more, what will happen when they shut down MAG’s servers? The game will be useless.
We all payed good money for these games, and to know that they might eventually become useless is bullshit.
By the way, I love the show, you guys kick ass.
My battle cry goes out to 2 games. On the one side we have Duke Nukem Forever on the other Yakuza 3. You´ll probably think “What the hell those are both negative examples!” but let me elaborate. I think that the delay and possible cancelation of Duke Nukem Forever actualy helped / will help the game or at least the franchise.
In my opinion the concept and theme of Duke Nukem has been outdated for a while. The industry moved away from comicy shooters like Duke Nukem 3D back in the day. I think that even if the game would have been released sometime like back in 2005 it could have never met the succes that was expected from the franchise.
The delay gives the developer time to reasses the market and maybe come up with a new concept apart from the old fps routine. Even in the case that the game never gets released at least the legacy of Duke Nukem 3D would have been preserved. And besides no one can doubt the humorous value of the epic delay of Duke Nukem forever ^^.
Now lets take a look at Yakuza 3. The game was released over a year ago in Japan. After keeping us in the dark about wether or not the game will be released in the west at all, Sega finaly announces that they will be releasing the game in March.
While I don´t know if the year between the Japanese release and the release in the US can be considered a delay, either way they should have delayed it even further. As you all probably know Sega cut out a significant amount of content from the western releases. Their explaination for this is that they didnt have the time to localize all of the content! That is just insulting to all the fans of the franchise. They had plenty of time between the releases and especially if you keep in mind that it is a text only localization. So effectively we get an incomplete game for 1 year of additional waiting.
My Battlecry isn´t exactly a delay issue more a absence of a western release issue. I am talking about “Ryū ga Gotoku Kenzan!”.
For the ones who don´t know that the hell i am talking about its the Yakuza Game that takes place in the feudal times. After the recent release of Yakuza 3 i had hoped that this game will finally be announced for release in EU and/or NA but sadly nothing happened yet.
I remember that i have read some announcement a little time ago that SEGA will watch how Yakuza 3 will sell in EU and NA and make an announcement based on that outcome. That really killed all hope for me that this game will be released here in EU or in NA. I think Yakuza 3 won´t sell very well because of exactly the point GermanGerbil mentioned.
I totally agree with you it´s insulting and it is on purpose they clearly don´t like us over here why else would they not want to make more money by selling more copies of a popular franchise, i dont get it. Holding back releases or completly abandon the idea of a release for EU and NA doesn´t make any sense to me.
So long
We all get disappointed when a game gets delayed.You never want to hear that the game that you are so looking forward to is going to come out some time later but sometimes that works for the best.We all know that Valve is known for delaying games *cough* Half Life. But I remember one day seeing an interview with some guy from Valve that was talking how they made the whole game from the beginning so you could see the cut scenes through Freemans eyes and he said that
even though their fans were angry that a game can be delayed for a while but it can suck for ever.That showed that game developers really tried to make the perfect game and that they care about each project they have(It also showed that they were not completely sure of what they where doing in the beginning but that’s another story)If game developers delay games to make them better and not just to advertise them some more then they should do it.
Despite all that they should really be sure of the date they give in the beginning because when you delay a game some people start to lose interest and if you delay it as many times as Conviction then you should just cancel it all together.Seriously the first time i saw this game was 2007 Jeez.
Hey BattleAxe crazy people,
My Battlecry goes out too Duke Nukem. Sadly it was canceled more then once and we did some of the in game play on the net flying around.
That game would of been great too if it would have gone out.
Hopefully Splinter Cell won’t be delayed anymore and the rock they sent too the all the people in the media isn’t a joke.
Lets hope other games won’t go thought so many delays because it also seems more and more of those delays are looking like publicity stunts I have notice.
It does not give me a negative point of view on the companies that do so. I just wish they would stop the BS and not post a release date on there games if they are not sure of it in the first place then they simply need to post it and wait a good solid mouth before they do or 2 mouths at most to make sure they have the release date.
Negative points are games that do come out and have a crap ton of bugs and glitches and don’t work correctly at all. Those games give them self a bad name. Sadly this has happen more then once in the in the gaming world. Let’s hope people in the gaming world heard your batlecry over this and understand your disappointment when this kind of thing happens.
My battle cry goes out to Reggie Fils-Aime taking the fifth during the latest episode of GTTV.
While Reggie did talk about the latest Nintendo games coming this spring such as Super Mario Galaxy 2, he did not give out any information for Nintendo products past June. I can understand Reggie being cautious due to the lack of content release last winter and the comments he made during the last show about the New Super Mario Brothers Wii. It’s o.k. to hold your cards close to your chest but if your going to be on television, you have to hint at something new. You cannot keep a low profile then go on television, it will just cause frustration for the Nintendo’s fans. Plus, how hard would it be to look up information from your own company and talk about that on GTTV. Were not asking for a huge release info, it could be just a demo that you would show at E3. So thanks Reggie for making the release calender after E3 for the Wii a big question mark.
Hey EBA!
My Battle Cry goes out to the delay of Red Steel 2. While I do admit I was unhappy with the fact I would have to wait another 4 or 5 months for the game, the fact that the development team gave us a ridiculously generous amount of updates showing the heavy amount of new polish to the game and their undying dedication to giving the fans as much info as humanly possible made me come to the conclusion that if you are going to delay a game, this is the right way to go in retaining your fan’s confidence in your work during a delay. Nothing gives a consumer greater assurance that your game is gonna kick butt than giving all the updates they can during delays. Creative Director Jason Vandenburge and company deserve major kudos for their efforts in making the most of their game during the delay.
Cry Havoc!!!!!
My BattleCry goes out to the Move haters.
Believe me, I feel your pain. That first video was a little rough. However, my faith remains as unscathed as Mel Gibson’s career.
The E3 demo last year proved Move’s potential, especially for swordplay. Motion Plus is… fine. But it doesn’t have the robust potential of Move.
Just imagine what a deep, engaging and challenging Zelda-esque title could be with the right Move controls. Fighting with a sword and shield. Boss battles. Actually improving your physical response and abilities, not just your stats. And all on PS3 hardware, to boot! Plus, classic controller layouts and functions are so well-established that only an idiot wouldn’t include them as an option in a hardcore game.
My mind boggles at the possibility for Star Wars games! Lightsabres. Force Powers. Freaking force grip where you reach out and GRAB someone or something and move it around in a 3D space in realtime. We gotta get EXCITED, people!
The WORST thing hardcore gamers can do is write Move off as a “casual-only” experience. If the interest isn’t there from the hardcore, then the hardcore games won’t get made. Move doesn’t HAVE to be just for lil’ Susie and Grandpa. It can be for us, too.
Will it?
Pfft. Probably not. But WHO KNOWS?
It’s in the hands of the developers now.
…Literally. (ah, snap!)
My battlecry goes to the almighy Duke Nukem Forever.
This game should have been release in 2002 after the second trailer for it. Instead they stared from scratch in 2002. WTF?! Where they F***ing high when they did that? What kind of dumbass would stared from scratch after they had been working on the game for 5(?) years?
My battle cry goes to the game delay that goes down in history as the best worst thing to happen to a company.
During the development of Half Life 2 you may recall an incident with a hacker and the games code at the time. What most people might not remember is that what had gotten leaked was criticized everywhere and was not very good. The Half Life 2 that almost was sucked.
This is a terrible thing to happen to any company BUT… the delay that followed after the build was scrapped due to those negative comments led VALVe to create what is considered by many to be the greatest game of all time.
The thing that I am really getting at though is that all games are delayed for a reason and ultimately come out better for it, While gamers may have to wait another couple of months everybody ultimately benefits.
I’m a week late, but who gives a crap? (irony with this week being about delays)
my belated battlecry goes out to skate 3! after the miserable crash of what tony hawk ride is/will be skate 3 is going to ‘rad-ify’ my 2010. i loved skate 2 and i wanted so much more, and by the looks of things it could rival THPS2.
I hope this battlecry gets as much attentions as possible, because the skate series is really amazing and under-appreciated and i want all the axe heads out there to just take a quick look at skate, and get pumped for skate 3. thumbs up to EA’s new philosophy of supporting these smaller IPs like dead space and skate
After talking with you, meeting the team and getting a better understanding of what is involved in the position, I am even more confident there can be no better a match.