Faulty games released early to get the xmas $$$

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It's not just around the holidays. More and more, developers are pushing their games out the door ahead of schedule, despite bugs and glitches, in order to make deadlines. And why the hell not? Now that gaming consoles are closer to computers, with internet access providing the ability to patch games after the fact, there's less incentive for developers to release polished products. It's rather sad and, at times, frustrating.

Gran Turismo 5. Over a year later they're still working on it. Of course, there's two ways of looking at it. If they release a stable but unfinished product, and are willing to continue working on it after release, then the fans can have some say on what features they want added/changed, and it extends the lifespan of the game. On the other hand, we're essentially paying them to do QA work. But PD has been good about supporting their game, far too many games just get released in an unfinished state and will only ever be patched if there is something that completely breaks the game.

Release dates are the problem really. Everyone wants to have a release date, so the publisher puts out some random date just to shut people up for a while, and then they can either delay it or release an unfinished game, both of which are sure to piss people off. More games need to adopt a "done when it's done" policy, and gamers need to stop pressuring companies to decide on a release date.