Between No Man's Sky, Street Fighter V, Final Fantasy XV, Mass Effect Andromeda and now maybe Persona 5 of all things, this is now officially a trend that publishers are taking with their games. I now think it is the single worst thing to happen to videogames.
Sure, there's the glass-half-full approach to this: most publishers who release a shoddy, rushed-out game would typically say "Fuck you, got mine" and not bother making any fixes. There's also the strange middle-ground example with FFXV, which does not entirely get a pass as it does have some narrative/gameplay flaws that should have been ironed out before release, but is still alleging to address those flaws as well as add completely new (and previously unplanned) additions to the game such as off-road driving and additional playable characters.
But the most egregious examples are just far too terrible for this trend to continue. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a technical embarrasment that plenty of people on staff must have noticed, but was still shipped out anyway because "fuck the fans, get it out there (and later tell them how much we care)". Having a detailed roadmap of patches doesn't fill me with any relief...it just tells me the game isn't worth playing at all until months after all their patches (or even then...I've personally lost all interest in ever touching that game).
There was a brief moment where the argument could be made about "early access" console games, and it began and ended with Street Fighter V. If Capcom had released that game with a functioning Arcade Mode, the Fight Money store and an almost-complete online network, then this could have been the beginning of a unique trend with getting games out earlier so long as the core features were available. Instead, their Makoto walk animation levels of slow updates have decimated their sales and possibly any longterm interest. There's something to be said when every single fighting game released afteward has come out with three times SFV's roster and with far quicker updates.
And now this might happen with Persona 5. The circumstances may not be as shitty: the translation isn't bad, the streaming situation can easily be reversed, etc. But it didn't have to happen. It was the one game I'm certain lots of people were hoping would release issue-free. My launch experience has been soured as a result, and if Atlus is going to come up with their own "patches roadmap" to polish the localization, I might just put the game down then and there. It's extremely rare for me to go back and replay a game 30+ hours, and Persona games tend to go towards the hundreds. What's the point playing a product that I know is officially "inferior", especially when I can still put time toward the games that came out bullshit-free? Imagine if Nintendo pulled this shit with Zelda or any of their other releases.
I'm at a point where just reading the PR-formatted letters that state how these fixes are the result of "the fans" and "strong community feedback" makes me want to puke.
We aren't your fucking fans, we're your customers. If you really cared, you wouldn't have done us dirty to begin with.
Again, not every instance of this is a No Man's Sky fuck-up, but it's becoming more and more of a common trend and I for one am sick of it. I'm not saying every new release has to be perfect and bug-free from launch, but the corners these publishers have cut are far beyond simple annoyances like Zelda's framerate. They are sweeping issues that take months (or possibly never) to fix. I honestly can't think of a worse thing to happen to modern videogames.
Sure, there's the glass-half-full approach to this: most publishers who release a shoddy, rushed-out game would typically say "Fuck you, got mine" and not bother making any fixes. There's also the strange middle-ground example with FFXV, which does not entirely get a pass as it does have some narrative/gameplay flaws that should have been ironed out before release, but is still alleging to address those flaws as well as add completely new (and previously unplanned) additions to the game such as off-road driving and additional playable characters.
But the most egregious examples are just far too terrible for this trend to continue. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a technical embarrasment that plenty of people on staff must have noticed, but was still shipped out anyway because "fuck the fans, get it out there (and later tell them how much we care)". Having a detailed roadmap of patches doesn't fill me with any relief...it just tells me the game isn't worth playing at all until months after all their patches (or even then...I've personally lost all interest in ever touching that game).
There was a brief moment where the argument could be made about "early access" console games, and it began and ended with Street Fighter V. If Capcom had released that game with a functioning Arcade Mode, the Fight Money store and an almost-complete online network, then this could have been the beginning of a unique trend with getting games out earlier so long as the core features were available. Instead, their Makoto walk animation levels of slow updates have decimated their sales and possibly any longterm interest. There's something to be said when every single fighting game released afteward has come out with three times SFV's roster and with far quicker updates.
And now this might happen with Persona 5. The circumstances may not be as shitty: the translation isn't bad, the streaming situation can easily be reversed, etc. But it didn't have to happen. It was the one game I'm certain lots of people were hoping would release issue-free. My launch experience has been soured as a result, and if Atlus is going to come up with their own "patches roadmap" to polish the localization, I might just put the game down then and there. It's extremely rare for me to go back and replay a game 30+ hours, and Persona games tend to go towards the hundreds. What's the point playing a product that I know is officially "inferior", especially when I can still put time toward the games that came out bullshit-free? Imagine if Nintendo pulled this shit with Zelda or any of their other releases.
I'm at a point where just reading the PR-formatted letters that state how these fixes are the result of "the fans" and "strong community feedback" makes me want to puke.
We aren't your fucking fans, we're your customers. If you really cared, you wouldn't have done us dirty to begin with.
Again, not every instance of this is a No Man's Sky fuck-up, but it's becoming more and more of a common trend and I for one am sick of it. I'm not saying every new release has to be perfect and bug-free from launch, but the corners these publishers have cut are far beyond simple annoyances like Zelda's framerate. They are sweeping issues that take months (or possibly never) to fix. I honestly can't think of a worse thing to happen to modern videogames.
