Industry's trend of releasing the game "unfinished"

In this thread I'm not talking about games that in "early access" or "open/closed beta" states but rather games that have been marketed by the publishers and developers as "100% complete" but yet still plagued by countless of glitches, bugs, too many unused assets/ideas and such. I have at least 2 biggest offenders of this trend.

First is Blue Reflection. While its market is small to begin with but it is a daring attempt by its developer rival the Persona series made by Atlus but unfortunate its execution is half-baked at best. In fact according to some rumors Gust were forced to complete a project that should take at least 2 years(24 months) in just 6 months in order to catch-up with its deadline. The results are bad graphics, too few playable characters, too few characters can be interacted with, shallow combat, bad plot/writings, etc. No sequel were planned but some dedicated fans hoped that Gust will fix these problems in future games, if they still interested of making any.

Another is Final Fantasy XV. While this one is unsurprising but Square-Enix was in immense pressure from the fans and journalists to see the game actually hitting the shelves. It did in 29th November 2016 and that version is plagued with glitches and some chapters are not even in the game. It took several DLCs and countless of patches and updates to further polish the game and as of 2018, almost two years later the game still not 100% complete and there are still some DLCs waiting for release. The game itself already big and those patches and DLCs forced the owners of earlier model of PS4 to delete some of their games to make way for FFXV. If you planning to play the PC version and make sure you have 4TB hard disk ready. The game is amazing right now, at least from those who loves it but the game's technical issue already killed my interest to the game.

I think they have to do it that way cos the video games graphics are more and more realistic/beautiful and more high-quality cutscene, more features more music, the cost to make a good game is not like 10 years ago anymore, much much higher. And game development process is full of unexpected things, not like movies, you just have to make it look good, games have so many situations to go wrong, the more freedom the game gives the player, the more actions, features, the more ways for bugs to appear. And some bugs take days to be solved. So, usually, the studios will burn up their budget really soon and have to release the game sooner than they should to get more money to complete it.

Thankfully it's rare, but yeah...sucks when it happens.

Even then, though, it's up for debate. They could have easily stopped supporting No Man's Sky and said "Hey, it's done. Quit yer bitchin'" and technically they would have been right, but thankfully they still develop that game beyond the bare minimum.

Thank you for exempting early release/beta/etc from your critique @lembu90 I enjoy those games a lot; I have many (and have had many before that) early release games loaded at all times that, even if not finished, have given me more than my dollars worth. Between Factorio, Stonehearth, Rise of Industry, Northgard, Prison Architect, They Are Billions, and numerous others, some of which went on to version 1.0 by now, I don't see any problem with early release provided they continue to develop it.

There's always the possibility of things going all "Spacebase DF-9" on us, though.

Yep that's quite sad actually :/

Devs really loves a 1st day patches.

personally I have had fabulous fun and good results by using Steam Early Access

It totally makes ZERO SENSE but it actually works really very well.

surprisingly

I think Early Access would be OK if some of the money you paid was held in escrow and only released when the game is has all the features updated as it was initially described.

Other than that, I can't see why it's good for anyone besides the publisher/developer.

I recently pulled out my SNES and played Super Mario World. I didn't need an update. I played my XBoxOne today and had to wait 20 minutes to play because of a random update. I understand the point of updates. A lot of games need them. The one key difference between my SNES and my XBoxOne is any bugs/issues associated with my newer system can be resolved instantaneously due to mandated updates. The game glitch I have been using for almost 25 years on my SNES will never be resolved because there are no updates available. The point I am trying to make is back then we were forced to deal with any and all issues that came from developers. We do not have that issue anymore.

nope the amount of horror stories i read with bad management for game dev.

time and time again i seen the bad manger for the game get hired to another dev. same issue arise with that game to.

gdc mag has that issue down pate

In tact this weekend I played a very unfinished game and it was awesome fun.

it was only $3!

StarsOne is under the radar but really cool if you like a lot of crafting

It's the reason why I stopped game collecting and went back to PC and Steam. What's the point of owning a physical console copy of, say, Street Fighter 5 in fifteen years when the patch servers have been shut down? Give it to someone who doesn't already have a console with the patch downloaded and they basically have less than half a game. And what about Tony Hawk 5 on PS4 and Xbone, where the game isn't even on the disc? All the disc contains is the tutorial, the rest it downloads off the internet, all because they had to push the game out before the license deal expired.

And that's not even mentioning the games that come out broken on day one, making an unpatched copy unplayable.

"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." -Shigeru Miyamoto