I appreciate that, as mentioned in my post. I don't know...I just feel sometimes the game industry seems to be often poor in communicating information about their products generally, outside of this Driveclub issue, and it is perceived that its ok because 'Game Industy gonna Game Industry' and due to the stereotypes that exists about gamers overall.
It certainly is, we're getting to the point of it improving somewhat though, for example, although an Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty haven't even been announced, we can pretty accurately guess the release dates, and publishers also know not to put releases in those windows, unless they mean to compete with them.
I think that's the first step towards a more Hollywood like release system, which the industry really would benefit from.
Delaying a game to ensure quality? Great. Delaying a game with little notice, not really saying when it'll be available after making it front and centre of your early PR drive (club), banding it around the schedules - comes across a little unprofessional for an industry of this scale.
DriveClub is dodgy, the decision to delay that game obviously came way way before we heard about it, almost nothing had been shown, it wasn't in a visual or performance standard to ship when it was a single car on a track, let alone a racing experience, and the director was off when the game would have had to go gold because his wife was having a child.
They didn't just take the latest build and decided it wasn't up to standard, the delay was planned, and kept secret for whatever reason.
Completely off topic: Imagine the game series didn't exist and movies of the Half-Life series released exactly as they did as the games. Half-Life 2 / Episode 2 was released and ended on a cliffhanger with the promise of a regular follow up then...nothing. What do you think the company behind the films would do? Be equally non-chalent to people asking the question?
I don't really think the ending of EP2 would be considered a cliffhanger in cinema. To the gaming audience, if a story isn't tied up in a bow, and it's not positive, it's not over, that's not really the case. If you take Children of Men, the most Half-Life of any film, it's ending is actually very similar to EP2, you know the plan (ironically, the same, to get to a ship to save the world), someone dies, and it ends abruptly.
Of course HL is different, because EP3 was announced, we know it doesn't end there, but it's also different because the game industry is a technology focused industry, film doesn't suffer feature creep. It could, Gravity could have been delayed till 4k/60fps was viable, but technology moves so slowly, and is considered so secondary to the experience, that the audience doesn't consider it important.
EP3 was an unfortunate situation, but it's kind of the only one like it that I can think of. Most story linked sequels don't get made because no one cares, like Advent Rising or Too Human.
