Ship It Now!!

Today, an article on Joystiq got me thinking of an increasing problem in games today. It was an article about NCAA 07 having a bug that is forcing EA to redistribute the game. I thought about the increasing problem with the Quality Assurance testing for games. I remember in the cartridge days, testing was a serious thing. Because of the costs of media (cartridges vs. CD/DVDs) and distribution (no online patches), the testing cycle was much more rigorous than now. This year alone, I have seen blatant problems with games that should have been detected with basic testing. I have seen games like MLB 2K6, King Kong, Dead Rising, Prey, and Oblivion have problems that should have been “shaked” out during the testing cycle.
A lot of these problems are because of bad scheduling by managers and executives who don’t understand development timetables. Case in point: Gran Turismo 2, 1999. Sony wants the sequel to their great racing hit to be on store shelves in time for the holidays. They rush it, and they send out an incomplete game. Even after completing everything, you could only complete 98.2% of the game. It wasn’t just buggy, it was incomplete.
Another cause is the fact that since most game console owners are now online, we can come to expect the same “patch cycle” PC owners are all too familiar with. It is getting to the point that a lot of development houses rely on this too much, saying things like “Ship it. We can always patch it later.” The patch cycle isn’t completely a horrible thing though. I think Bethesda has done a great job patching Oblivion into what could have been a disaster into an amazing game. I guess it just means that I should wait a couple of months before buying games from EA or Bethesda.
In contrast to the problem, I must say there is one company that has had a great stance on testing. I hate to be a fanboy here, but it is Nintendo. Aside from a couple of crashes on Metroid Prime (which technically wasn’t developed by Nintendo), Nintendo has put out some well tested games. In fact a lot of people get angry when Nintendo postpones games (any Zelda), but they want to make sure they don’t publish schlock. For example, Ocarina of Time was delayed for almost an entire year, but what eventually came out was what some consider to be one of the greatest games ever.
In summary, it’s not when your game is published that you are remembered for, but it is how it plays. Sure, you may win on initial sales, but it’s sales over time where you will make your money, and the gamers will thank you for it.