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What's the worst thing done by a company this generation?

basically just.. everything about the 360.

proprietary HDDs, wifi dongles, etc

pay to play online for games consisting primarily of peer-to-peer connections. locking once free services or services you can get for free elsewhere behind a pay wall to make your service seem more appealing.

and of course, the innumerable hardware issues. disk shredding, RRoD, e74.

that console was just a mess. glad I jumped ship after just 1 dead system.
 
VICI0US said:
basically just.. everything about the 360.

proprietary HDDs, wifi dongles, etc

pay to play online for games consisting primarily of peer-to-peer connections. locking once free services or services you can get for free elsewhere behind a pay wall to make your service seem more appealing.

and of course, the innumerable hardware issues. disk shredding, RRoD, e74.

that console was just a mess. glad I jumped ship after just 1 dead system.
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236985-flawlessvictory_large.jpg


Couldn't have said it better, and we gamers kept lapping that shit up.
 
Can't believe that there are people defending MS over the ludicrously high defective rate on early 360s. It is completely inexcusable - I cannot think of any piece of consumer electronics that comes close to this. My friends in high school all had PS2s and we used them heavily (especially since they were also our DVD players at the time) and not one person had a defective unit. My PS2 makes a grinding noise when the laser seeks after like 6 years of use, but it's still pretty much working. But there's a body count for 360's - it's commonplace for people to go through 3 or 4. What a terribly engineered piece of hardware.
 
While this story is not really the worst this gen, it needs to be mentioned because very few sites report it, even on NeoGaf.

Frozenbyte has launched Trine 2 - a very good game last year. The only problem is that when played on an Asian/Japanese PS3, a game-breaking bug will occur. You will not be able to allocate skill points when you level up since a glitch occurs where the X button used to assign a skill point is also the button that closes the window. More on it is seen at their forums:

http://frozenbyte.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4009

Frozenbyte has refused to patch the game because of the costs involved. Such a crappy reason on screwing people who paid good money to paid a very good game that is broken.

At least with Skyrim, Bethesda is still trying (doesn't mean what they did wasn't shitty though).
 
bakedpony said:
While this story is not really the worst this gen, it needs to be mentioned because very few sites report it, even on NeoGaf.

Frozenbyte has launched Trine 2 - a very good game last year. The only problem is that when played on an Asian/Japanese PS3, a game-breaking bug will occur. You will not be able to allocate skill points when you level up since a glitch occurs where the X button used to assign a skill point is also the button that closes the window. More on it is seen at their forums:

http://frozenbyte.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4009

Frozenbyte has refused to patch the game because of the costs involved. Such a crappy reason on screwing people who paid good money to paid a very good game that is broken.

At least with Skyrim, Bethesda is still trying (doesn't mean what they did wasn't shitty though).
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Holy shit, that's ridiculous.
 
bakedpony said:
While this story is not really the worst this gen, it needs to be mentioned because very few sites report it, even on NeoGaf.

Frozenbyte has launched Trine 2 - a very good game last year. The only problem is that when played on an Asian/Japanese PS3, a game-breaking bug will occur. You will not be able to allocate skill points when you level up since a glitch occurs where the X button used to assign a skill point is also the button that closes the window. More on it is seen at their forums:

http://frozenbyte.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4009

Frozenbyte has refused to patch the game because of the costs involved. Such a crappy reason on screwing people who paid good money to paid a very good game that is broken.
Click to expand...

Wow, I have an imported Jap PS3. Just as well I didn't buy Trine 2!

RDR also had a similar bug in the poker minigame - I think that square was assigned to two different functions (hit and leave or something). It might have been eventually patched out though.
 
tborsje said:
Wow, I have an imported Jap PS3. Just as well I didn't buy Trine 2!

RDR also had a similar bug in the poker minigame - I think that square was assigned to two different functions (hit and leave or something). It might have been eventually patched out though.
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Even if it wasn't patched, at least the bug only affected a minigame.
 
I have no idea if this was because of the PSN disaster, but not long after it my credit card was being used at a WalMart on the other side of the country. So for me personally that's the closest to home any of these have affected me.
 
Didn't realize how bad region locking was until I considered studying abroad for a year. It won't affect me for 99% of my life, but there's no other choice.
 
Sony removing features without a doubt.

Sony is basically trying their hardest to battle Capcom in a race for who can fuck up the most by the end of the gen.
 
Has to be Bethesda and the wide gaming media conning millions of people for me. Maybe tied with the RROD. While Sony's actions and infrastructures regarding OtherOS and the information-stealing were deplorable, I have no doubt that they were reactive measures due to unforeseen circumstances. It was stupid not to have made contingency plans for them, and it was irresponsible to have such loose security,but they didn't do it n purpose.

Microsoft may have been aware of the wide system failure rate of those first model 360s, I'm not sure. Their reaction was poor, but I can't completely condemn them without knowing to what extent they were aware of the problems pre-release.

Bethesda though. What a gang of fucking crooks, and what a bunch of spineless, brown-nosing weasel fuckers the media revealed themselves to be. They fucking knew that their product was broken, the media knew that they hadn't played the fucking thing, yet they conspired to oversee those two little facts to make a few million bucks and stay in the game respectively. Wankers, the lot of them.


Outlets that 'reviewed' the PS3 version: Twats
Outlets that ignored the issues post-release: Twats
Bethesda: Scamming con-artist twats
 
Microsoft with the RROD fiasco and Sony with removing Linux but I think Microsoft is the most guilty of any company this generation and I have a feeling that next gen they will do exactly the same thing.

Anyone that's defending Microsoft for the RROD deserves to be slapped because it's inexcusable but Sony does deserve to be criticized for the removal of Linux.
 
OldJadedGamer said:
Capcom started the always online DRM for single player console games this gen.
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Goddamn that's an evil one. Still think Sony takes the cake though in terms of a single instance of evil, over MS and over Capcom. Taking functionality away is just the worst. Worse than any hardware failures or people willingly buying an unreliable product.

If we're talking Ls in general though, Capcom has the biggest collection this gen, hands down. They have let the dark side flow through them.
 
From software

Dark Souls Port..........arguably the biggest crime against humanity done by a company this generation
 
LOL at the people listing PR statements hyping up a console by out of touch CEOs as the WORST thing done this gen when people lost money on shitty defective hardware and broken unplayable games.

Personally it was YLOD for me. Cost me $150 to get my system replaced like a month past the end of the warranty. Lucky for me I played Skyrim on PC heavily modded. It really sucks for the people who didnt have that option and bought PS3 Skyrim they got ripped off with promises of a new engine and a bunch of copy/paste reviews of the 360 Skyrim.
 
Black_Stride said:
From software

Dark Souls Port..........arguably the biggest crime against humanity done by a company this generation
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But realistically it's actually a non-issue. Durante's patch was uploaded within 15 minutes of the Steam unlock and has only gotten better with the passing weeks.

Sure, it sucks that completely unmodified the game is damn near unplayable, but installing and configuring the patch takes about 2 minutes.

It's unfortunate that a game company would feel comfortable releasing one of their prized games in such a disastrous state, but there's no question that Dark Souls PC is the absolute definitive version of the game. Especially now that texture modifying has been unlocked.

I went back and tried to play Demon's Souls again a few days ago and had to turn it off after 20 minutes, I just couldn't take the muddied, disgusting, low resolution graphics. Playing 60 hours of Dark Souls at 2560x1440 with all sorts of fancy PC-only graphical enhancements like MSAA and SSAO completely spoiled me.
 
IMHO in terms of scale and level of screw-up I'd have to go with Sony's handling of the PSN hack; the scale of private info lost and the length of time it took to let people know was nuts. It's a screw-up/hack that's going to go down in history as one of the biggest-- they had international politicians calling for inquiries and many class action lawsuits. Not every company can claim that.

They were even accused of spending millions to secure company data and completely ignoring user data when they learned of the hack-- six days before informing their customers. Then the whole thing led to Sony updating their user agreements preventing users from class action lawsuits against the company along with other lawsuits with insurance companies. I know it's sort of blown over but damn, it's kind of hard to top.

I also think Zynga has been pretty dirty. Their "copy as much as possible without getting caught" strategy is really unhealthy for the market and other devs and the fact that up until the EA lawsuit they seemed to be getting away with everything is a bit frustrating.
 
Sony removing OtherOS from the PS3 and then a huge number of gamers blaming hackers(and putting them on the same level as pirates). Really? A company takes away a major feature from a console and you blame hackers, the people who like opening system features and bugs and shit to the public?

Sony just fucking did it again with hard-locking the region on the vita's memory card, from what I can gather. You gonna blame pirates for that, too? FUCK YOU. As long as you keep shifting blame, Sony is gonna keep pulling this shit. Stand up for your rights, for fuck's sake.
 
Punchpudding said:
IMHO in terms of scale and level of screw-up I'd have to go with Sony's handling of the PSN hack; the scale of private info lost and the length of time it took to let people know was nuts. It's a screw-up/hack that's going to go down in history as one of the biggest-- they had international politicians calling for inquiries and many class action lawsuits. Not every company can claim that.
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XBOXLive has its fair share of points/hacks and cc info access.
 
antitrop said:
But realistically it's actually a non-issue. Durante's patch was uploaded within 15 minutes of the Steam unlock and has only gotten better with the passing weeks.

Sure, it sucks that completely unmodified the game is damn near unplayable, but installing and configuring the patch takes about 2 minutes.
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By that logic Ubisofts (and all) DRM is a non-issue cause you can download a crack 15 minutes after the game comes out.

By that logic RRoD was never an issue cuz with some thermal paste, and a couple screw drivers you could fix the issue in 20 minutes.
 
Satchel said:
Let me get this right. The PS2 was the most unreliable console ever until 2005/2006 and Sony's solution was fuck you.

The 360 then took the mantle off Sony, and as an apology would replace your console for up to 3 years and it's the worst thing to happen to gaming?

Mind you, it's not like the 360 failures affected EVERYONE.

When PSN got hacked, that affected EVERYONE. it's not even comparable. Your personal information was stolen.

How is a faulty console that gets replaced for free for 3 years even the same league as my credit card details being kept in a .txt file?
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The ps2's failure rate was nowhere close to x360. The fact remains the 360 has one of the worst failure rates for all consoles this gen.

When PSN got hacked what exactly happened apart from the fact that there was no online play for some time? - No one's credit card info was stolen. Nothing came out of it. You are acting as if thousands of people were affected and lost millions of dollars instantly because of the hack. How were you affected personally? Did someone use whatever information they got of you to do something? Any personal examples.? If not stop with the hyperbole because Sony is not the first company to be hacked and will not be the last either considering Epic, Bethesda, MS, Valve all got hacked again in some form later..
 
VICI0US said:
basically just.. everything about the 360.

proprietary HDDs, wifi dongles, etc

pay to play online for games consisting primarily of peer-to-peer connections. locking once free services or services you can get for free elsewhere behind a pay wall to make your service seem more appealing.

and of course, the innumerable hardware issues. disk shredding, RRoD, e74.

that console was just a mess. glad I jumped ship after just 1 dead system.
Click to expand...

This. Perfectly stated.
 
Lime said:
Silent Hill HD collection by Konami


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protectedimage.php
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Maybe not the worst thing in general, but the one that affected me the most, yes.
I was looking forward to this collection so much..
 
Actually, the way Sony handled the hack issue was rather acceptable. They shut everything down, making sure there was no room for error and covering their asses. Just my opinion though.

As far as screw ups from a company, I'd have to say Bethesda's screw up with Skyrim. That's just bad on so many levels. I'll also add their delays with the DLC that the PS3 was suppose to get along with the 360 and PC but still haven't. I'm still wondering what the hell the hold up is. As of the moment, I'm starting to think Bethesda is getting lazy with their games and content.
 
Bethesda and Skyrim for the PS3 takes the cake for me. I've gone over it before in a few other threads, but I will not tire of saying how disgusted I was with their lies from the beginning and how their handling of the issues were absolutely pathetic. I called it from the first announcement when they claimed they had a new engine, my words were something along the lines of "I'll believe it when I see it". Then months later they quietly backpedaled on that statement with the "well it's the same engine, BUT IT'S GOT MORE STUFF!" (Because that's what their shitty, broken engine needed).

I still got suckered in and gave them the benefit of the doubt, and 50 hours in I was in some sloppy mess that sunk down to 5 - 15 FPS more often than not, 70 hours in and it was nearly unplayable. Two updates went by that they proudly stated would fix everything, only to have the issues come back, even worse, in a few hours of play time. I haven't touched it since.

Lied from the beginning, lied when it was released, lied after and, as far as I know, continue to fucking lie about it. It's a shame that studio that produced one of my favourite games ever, Morrowind, a game I dropped probably 400+ hours in, became a stable for a bunch of lying thieves, but the worst part is that they got away with it and will probably continue to get away with it. They will, however, never get another penny from me and I personally hope that studio fails miserably someday and assholes like Todd Howard never get another fucking job in this industry.
 
TemplaerDude said:
Bethesda and Skyrim for the PS3 takes the cake for me. I've gone over it before in a few other threads, but I will not tire of saying how disgusted I was with their lies from the beginning and how their handling of the issues were absolutely pathetic. I called it from the first announcement when they claimed they had a new engine, my words were something along the lines of "I'll believe it when I see it". Then months later they quietly backpedaled on that statement with the "well it's the same engine, BUT IT'S GOT MORE STUFF!" (Because that's what their shitty, broken engine needed).

I still got suckered in and gave them the benefit of the doubt, and 50 hours in I was in some sloppy mess that sunk down to 5 - 15 FPS more often than not, 70 hours in and it was nearly unplayable. Two updates went by that they proudly stated would fix everything, only to have the issues come back, even worse, in a few hours of play time. I haven't touched it since.

Lied from the beginning, lied when it was released, lied after and, as far as I know, continue to fucking lie about it. It's a shame that studio that produced one of my favourite games ever, Morrowind, a game I dropped probably 400+ hours in, became a stable for a bunch of lying thieves, but the worst part is that they got away with it and will probably continue to get away with it. They will, however, never get another penny from me and I personally hope that studio fails miserably someday and assholes like Todd Howard never get another fucking job in this industry.
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see kids, this is what happens when you dont own an xbox 360. I could picture this poor man holding a gun to his head while writing this post.

thanks a lot, PS3.
 
Tie between Skyrim on PS3 from Bethesda and trying to ignore RROD from MS for me. Both hugely impacted a significant portion of their respective customer bases and both represent companies failing to protect their consumers - in fact arguably both companies were deceiving their consumer base for a period of time.

Honorable mention to Sony removing Other OS. I do understand the pressure on them to do so came from outside the company but on principle I dislike seeing such business practices.

Honorable mention to MS for taking timed exclusives and their use to levels with their CoD and GTA IV deals. I feel timed exclusives aren't of value to the consumer base and were simply an attempt to force people to consider their console over other options vs allowing their console to simple be the better offer. Again I'm not fond of this kind of practice in principle.

Honorable mention to Konami for SH HD Collection. Smaller scale version of Skyrim on PS3 and just deplorable that such a shoddy product could even be sold in that condition.
 
- Xbox 360: RROD
- PS3: YLOD (fat PS3s only)
- Wii: (At least on launch units and soon after) Overheating if the user leaves WiiConnect24 enabled...which over time caused damage to internal parts, glitchy graphics and eventual total system failure.
- Wii: Not supporting HD resolutions. That decision severely hurt the visual presentation of certain games, such as Xenoblade. Fortunately though there's Dolphin.
- Namco/From - Dark Souls: delivering one of the worst PC ports of the past 5 years. Thank goodness for Durante's DSfix.
- Day-one DLC and on-disc DLC and retailer exclusive DLC
- Skyrim PS3, especially Bethesda clearly knowing about that game's issues prior to launch
- PSN hack and the slow way Sony handled it and communicated it. That incident has made me very cautious about which online entities I give my sensitive info to.
- Microsoft forcing developers to pay a fee in order to submit patches to games
- Steam: Valve's nearly nonexistent customer support
- Many PC developers testing their games almost exclusively on nVidia cards and neglecting AMD
- Microsoft ripping off customers on the prices of some of the 360's accessories
- Remedy lying to us about the X360 version of Alan Wake being in HD when it was shown to be sub-HD by Digital Foundry
- Atlus shutting down the servers for the NA version of Demon's Souls
- Rockstar's poor treatment of its employees at some (all?) of its studios
- Microsoft's disappointing marketing of XBLA, Sony's lackluster marketing of PSN and Nintendo's pathetic marketing of WiiWare

RRoD and the PSN hack are easily the worst, though.
 
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