Quote:
Ragnarok-X said:
Every recent game had patches coming out not even a WEEK after the game was available in retail.
10 years ago, i can barely imagine patches at all (compared to today), and even if there were patched, there were definitly no game-breaking bugs/problems. Today every major game is rushed and released bug, there is no doubt about it.
|
To be fair here, one week after retail release does not equal one week developer time. To go Gold, the situation would generally go something like so (completely making up amount of time here, but 4 weeks sounds very reasonable to me): 28 days before release, software is frozen; 26 days before, everything is packaged together for easy installation; 25 days before, you start pressing discs and stuffing boxes; 7-10 days before, you load up trucks and ship to distribution centers/stores; then the game is released in retail everywhere at the same time. That leaves developers with about 3 weeks of time to continue testing, bug squashing, and planning new features to either make it into patches, or expansion packs. So patches coming a week after retail release could very well represent another month of developer testing.
As for patches, I see SF as taking advantage of the precedent set in SEIV. If they want to keep Aaron on as one of their developers (since the SE series is a labor of love; why else work on it for over a decade, largely by himself?), they will likely support patches through Spring '07 (May?), but then they will probably want a Classic/Gold split or "Expansion Pack". That could come around Summer '07 (August?), and then we have another period of patches working up through Winter '08 (March?). I could also see SF hiring some developers to create "official" mods for the game. User mods will still be big in the core fan community, but it would be hard for hobbyist modders to top an experienced design team working full time on a mod (and one that is officially pushed by the publisher, at that). I fully expect that SF will eventually hire a game designer, a writer, and a few modelers, and make a mod that is to SEV as Counter-Strike is to Halflife. New races with new descriptions and backstories, new technology trees, possibly unique to each race, and a slew of pre-made scenarios.