Place your bets! - chances of BioShock Infinite's release going smoothly after all the failed AAA launches of late

All of the big profile releases within the past month have had their fair share of issues from major performance bugs, crashes, glitches and then, well, then there's SimCity in a league of it's own

Aliens: Colonial Marines - poor AI, poor graphics (noticeably downgraded from beta footage), poor gameplay, poor story, poor characters, poor virtually everything. Bugs and glitches galore.

Crysis 3 - major performance issues, fixed for some with patch, not all people yet though. Also crashes, fixed AFAIK.

Tomb Raider - major performance issues, requires new NVIDIA drivers to fix (hurry up NVIDIA). Crashes & glitches, some of which have been fixed in a patch but needs that new driver.

SimCity - do I even have to say, such is the notoriety of this, now infamous, launch. Servers not allowing you to play the game, and when you can launch it it would boot you out, delete your saves, not allow you to start a new save etc. Plus many game features currently disabled. Plus major performance issues on NVIDIA 600 series laptop GPUs. Plus a plethora of game bugs and pathfinding issues.

So... I've preordered BioShock infinite. Do you think it has the same risk of a failed launch like these games, or do you have faith in Irrational Games to deliver a smooth launch?

 

SimCity is made by Maxis and published by EA, not by Irrational Games / 2K.

 

Oh I'm well aware of that. Just it seems like all high profile games lately have had major issues at launch, seems to be the new trend unfortunately

I personally have faith in Irrational. If anyone can do a non-crap launch it's them!

 

It gets back to the bean counters. Holding deadlines despite the game not being finished. It's stupid. I don't think it benefits the companies in any way. Well, problem is people will buy at launch and pre-order in droves, and with all the pre-order "bonuses" people fork over their cash regardless. The companies get their money, and there's nothing you can do about it, except not pre-order or buy the game until issues are fixed. Well nobody does anything about it. If these companies have pre-orders they should have a 15-30 day money back guarantee, period. While I think there should be a money back guarantee regardless of when you buy it, if you buy a game post launch with bad reviews, that's kind of your own fault.

 

Could do what some disappointed SimCity players have done and do a chargeback (if you pay with a credit card). Though honestly, I see no rationality in buying a game that must be connected to a DRM server, even when you only play in single-player mode. And I agree with HTWingNut here; I never saw the appeal with pre-ordering a game (I'm not swayed by the gimmicky extras that some companies try to give you to do so). Diablo III had similar issues, iirc.

Not sure about the other games since I rarely buy games anyway (new/old), but I'm not surprised that Crysis 3 performs like it does. Now the "Can it run Crysis?" question is valid again!

 

Yeah I am playing SP Crysis 3 right now and in one of the levels the FPS dropped down to 35-40fps on my slightly OC'd 680m while playing on high. It was an outdoor level, but indoors it runs a solid 45-60fps.

I really hope Bioshock Infinite is good to go at launch. I'm really looking forward to it. But I'm planning on buying Tomb Raider first after I finish Crysis 3. But I guess whichever goes on sale first I'll buy.

 

Why? Buying something sight unseen is frankly not that smart. You are just asking for disappointment and the publishers won't learn anything since they've already gotten your money. If you ask me, I'd cancel it and at least wait for reactions from people/reviewers you trust.

Personally I only buy games on sale usually one or two years after release. I simply don't see any upside to paying for an inferior product when I can wait a little to get a fully patched, much cheaper product that usually includes DLC.

 

Besides SimCity which I won't buy because I don't like that kind of games, I didn't had any major issues with the other games. Ok yeah well the performance of Crysis 3 isn't that stable but it's not annoying. Also about Tomb Raider which did run perfectly...

 

Aliens CM - Single player is bad, but Multiplayer is not that bad.
Crysis 3 - I would be surprised if a game with an engine like that wouldn't encounter any performance issue.
Tomb Raider - looks like a (lately) standard case of "play if when the new nvidia driver is out in order to avoid release issues"
SimCity - oh well...

I have to agree that all major releases of late have had problems, but I really trust Irrational on Bioshock: Infinite, despite all the development issues.

 

Because I love the Bioshock series and want to play as soon as it launches, I don't want to wait months to play. I bought the game for $34, waaaay below the usual $60 price tag that I'd have had to have paid at launch day.

 

It's only a matter of waiting about a day to a week post release for solid user impressions and reviews that aren't <strike>bought</strike> <strike>sponsored by, say, Internet Explorer</strike> written by Games Journalists (tm). Surely you can wait that long?

It's your money and you can do what you want with it, but preordering means that you don't get to participate in angry circlejerks on the internet if it does fall flat on its face. You aren't even allowed to sign your name in a sternly worded eBoycott petition. Sorry, it's all in the official internet rulebook. Look it up.

 

If you preorder one game, and you're disappointed, it's not your fault. If you make a habit out of it, at some point, it's really not the dev's fault.

When you look back at the dev's release history, it's unlikely that Bioshock Infinite is going to have major launch issues.

Anyone could have predicted that Sim City was going to have issues. We knew about the always-online situation for a while, and we've seen those systems fail over and over. I believe that what is happening is that they have to pay a lot of money to set up the server infrastructure, and simply aren't willing to pay for enough to cover the day 1 flood. Every time this happens, I hear something to the effect of: "we didn't come close to accurately predicting demand" - which means they bought a certain amount of hardware that can cover the server load on an average day, but not day 1.

 

Of course, it's your fault. Playing the mindless consumer card is such a weak copout. No one put a proverbial gun to your head. You are the one paying for a mystery (digital) box that you know next to nothing about.

Unless you count "not being a particularly good game" as a launch issue.

 

Reread my post more carefully.

 

i feel like something shady is going on with Bioshock Infinite. 2K is giving out too much incentives for pre-ordering the game. If it's too good to be true and all that. Hopefully thats not the case but my gut is telling me otherwise

 

Why is it that there's this theory that only bad games can have preorder incentives? Portal 2, Far Cry 3, Dishonored etc etc had preorder bonuses and are great games :S

 

My expectation: Bioshock Infinite will be prettier than its predecessors, but not as pretty as most people here would like it to be. There will be performance hiccups during its second beta phase . . . err, the first week after release (same thing) . . . but they'll be 90% resolved after the first week. The gameplay and writing are going to be closer in quality to Bioshock 2 - arcadey and a smidge north of mediocre, respectively - than Bioshock, which was a very good game. There will be several different DRM options, ranging from game expansions to weapon packs, and at least one of the game expansions will be considered superior to the base game to the extent that gamers will complain that they got a stripped-out game and had to buy the good parts separately.

In other words, basically the same as everything else these days, with the fact that it's a second sequel being no exception to that.

Fortunately, it'll cost no more than $10 with all of it's DLC and no notable bugs by the time I'm ready to buy and play it.

 

That's why I hoped I was wrong. But yeah look again, did any of the games you mentioned giveaway a major AAA title of the Fall earlier? Not only that but on the retail side, the bonuses are even better (or worse depend on your perspective). Again I hope I am wrong but personally, if the game is good enough on its own, why do they have to try to get people to pre-order with such amazing incentives? I almost fall for it

 

I think it's extremely high, would not pre-order.

 

I just about never preorder as a rule, and I don't think Bioshock will be any different.

 

Err I meant, extremely high chance of lots of issues at launch or being a big disappointment.