Members see less ads - sign up now for free and join the community!
-
This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn more.
- Status
You're making it sound like dumb ol Tabata submitted the game to some Microsoft exec, and they told him he needs to take a couple more months to polish it up to their standards, and he's like sure, no problem.
Not that, you know, the people in charge of the multi million dollar, extremely high profile project noticed that they're not quite on the pace they hoped, so they had a meeting and decided to extend it.
Please stop. It's wild, baseless story telling.
Not that, you know, the people in charge of the multi million dollar, extremely high profile project noticed that they're not quite on the pace they hoped, so they had a meeting and decided to extend it.
Please stop. It's wild, baseless story telling.
What Rogue-Tomato said doesn't sound like wild, baseless storytelling at all. DrBretto, that isn't the picture s/he painted at all...
Likes:
LeonBlade, TwoDotsO and Nova
Hardly. It's impossible for a QA team to find every bug under every circumstance especially in big games like this. So like I say, either it was submitted for approval and it failed or it wasn't submitted which means SE knew long ago that it would not be out by September 30th. Approvals need to be booked way way in advance to tie in with their own scheduling.
It's not baseless. It's an educated guess. But like I said, I don't believe it is delayed because you can be damn sure SE would have announced any delay before sending any updated release date marketing materials en mass to stores worldwide risking countless leaks on the internet causing a huge mess.(Well, you'd hope so anyway, as this would be the most sensible and logical thing to do)
= )
It's not baseless. It's an educated guess. But like I said, I don't believe it is delayed because you can be damn sure SE would have announced any delay before sending any updated release date marketing materials en mass to stores worldwide risking countless leaks on the internet causing a huge mess.(Well, you'd hope so anyway, as this would be the most sensible and logical thing to do)
= )
Out of curiosity - since you worked in QA - does Sony or MS share test plans before certification? What sort of testing goes on there; can't be all ad hoc? I know how we test our hypervisors, and we've had delays where we ran into an obscure, but P1, bug right before release, and had to delay it without warning. So I presume it's possible the reverse happened - the platform certification was going fine, but internal QA found something that caused a sudden delay.
Likes:
LeonBlade
I don't know if they share plans. I doubt it. A friend of mine works at SCEE in the approvals department and they do have a schedule they work off, and typically you'd only have 5 or 6 people working on 1 game, maybe less. They're mainly testing for function and making sure the game runs, and doesn't break the system, and doesn't obviously break itself - They don't concern themselves with graphics too much and stuff like that.
Internal QA halts when it goes off for approval though, as that means they have a release candidate which sort of means the developer is saying this is the final build and doesn't expect anything major to come back, especially since it costs thousands of pounds / dollars to send off for approval so the developer will always try and make sure nothing is wrong with it as they'll have to submit it again, which means they have to pay again. Also bare in mind that they have submit it to every territory. They don't just send a copy to Sony and MS. They send it to each region, like SCEE, SCEA, SCEJ etc etc.
If it is indeed delayed, it doesn't necessarily mean the bugs will take 2 months to fix. It might only take a couple of days to sort out, but it might be 2 months until there is another spot open for approvals to QA the game, because they'll have other games to do to, and they're a pretty small team.
Internal QA halts when it goes off for approval though, as that means they have a release candidate which sort of means the developer is saying this is the final build and doesn't expect anything major to come back, especially since it costs thousands of pounds / dollars to send off for approval so the developer will always try and make sure nothing is wrong with it as they'll have to submit it again, which means they have to pay again. Also bare in mind that they have submit it to every territory. They don't just send a copy to Sony and MS. They send it to each region, like SCEE, SCEA, SCEJ etc etc.
If it is indeed delayed, it doesn't necessarily mean the bugs will take 2 months to fix. It might only take a couple of days to sort out, but it might be 2 months until there is another spot open for approvals to QA the game, because they'll have other games to do to, and they're a pretty small team.
Likes:
LeonBlade
Thanks for the information. If you don't mind me asking, how long ago was your QA job? In this era of day 1 patches, I wouldn't have thought internal QA stopped; development would have branched from their various repos, and testing would go on. Any reports back from the certification process would then be internally scheduled, patched, rinse and repeat.
Given how high profile this release is - if it were a P1 that was fixable in a few days - does that still put the game at the end of the certification queue? I suppose we're in the 6-8 week window from the original release date, but I don't think it was a certification issue. It's still plausible, for sure, but if I had to guess, they simply weren't finished at the required milestone and needed more time. It's all academic, really. No doubt we'll get a better game because of the delay.
Given how high profile this release is - if it were a P1 that was fixable in a few days - does that still put the game at the end of the certification queue? I suppose we're in the 6-8 week window from the original release date, but I don't think it was a certification issue. It's still plausible, for sure, but if I had to guess, they simply weren't finished at the required milestone and needed more time. It's all academic, really. No doubt we'll get a better game because of the delay.
Likes:
LeonBlade
I worked QA at Codemasters 12 odd years ago. I worked on Toca Race Driver 3 and then went onto LMA Manager.
I don't know about Microsoft but SCEE etc have a live bug reporting system that the developers can pretty much see real time, so they can work on fixes while approvals is taking place, hence why they're able to release day 1 patches, but you also have to keep in mind that the patches also need to go through the approvals process to make sure it doesn't break anything. While they can work on the fixes, t's also worth noting that by this time though there is a code freeze in place, so no new code is added to the games core code at all.
Also remember that it needs to go through each territories approvals teams. One territory can't just test it and assume the localised versions are equally as bug free.
The reason why a lot of the time they have to reschedule approval and not just jump right on it a few days after it's ''fixed'' is because they may have another game due in at approvals and it would be unfair to delay that games process due to another, because a delay in approvals also means a delay for the developer in question for other things, like patches, marketing, production etc etc.
Obviously it's not always this organised and clean cut, so i guess exceptions can be made and such, but it's rare. The approvals teams are always busy.
I don't know about Microsoft but SCEE etc have a live bug reporting system that the developers can pretty much see real time, so they can work on fixes while approvals is taking place, hence why they're able to release day 1 patches, but you also have to keep in mind that the patches also need to go through the approvals process to make sure it doesn't break anything. While they can work on the fixes, t's also worth noting that by this time though there is a code freeze in place, so no new code is added to the games core code at all.
Also remember that it needs to go through each territories approvals teams. One territory can't just test it and assume the localised versions are equally as bug free.
The reason why a lot of the time they have to reschedule approval and not just jump right on it a few days after it's ''fixed'' is because they may have another game due in at approvals and it would be unfair to delay that games process due to another, because a delay in approvals also means a delay for the developer in question for other things, like patches, marketing, production etc etc.
Obviously it's not always this organised and clean cut, so i guess exceptions can be made and such, but it's rare. The approvals teams are always busy.
Last edited:
Likes:
LeonBlade
I'll take back the imagination part. Maybe I read more meaning into it, but I give the benefit of the doubt that you're not trying to imply incompetence without basis. But, respectfully, I feel it's still in the wild speculation camp.
To me a far simpler explanation is that, like any major project with a deadline, there are short term goals lining the process. One job needs more time here, it pushes back the start of another job, so maybe pull someone off this part to make up time, etc. Eventually, you see that you're missing more and more marks, and it comes time to recalculate your projections. I would agree that it's been in the backs of their minds for a while, but until you reach a point where you have to make the decision, you proceed as if you're going to make it.
I just find that far more plausible than them getting blindsided my any particular thing, least of all 300 people missing something a handful of testers catch. That's just from my experience managing large projects. I don't work in the industry, so maybe what you described is more common than I'd think, so I won't dismiss it. Just seems like it's reading too many leaves for my taste. Not everything has to have a single cause. A project this size with this many moving parts is bound to have to reevaluate the timeline that was created 3 years ago.
But, I do apologize for jumping to conclusions. The internet is full of some crazy during times like these, so I had an itchy trigger finger.
To me a far simpler explanation is that, like any major project with a deadline, there are short term goals lining the process. One job needs more time here, it pushes back the start of another job, so maybe pull someone off this part to make up time, etc. Eventually, you see that you're missing more and more marks, and it comes time to recalculate your projections. I would agree that it's been in the backs of their minds for a while, but until you reach a point where you have to make the decision, you proceed as if you're going to make it.
I just find that far more plausible than them getting blindsided my any particular thing, least of all 300 people missing something a handful of testers catch. That's just from my experience managing large projects. I don't work in the industry, so maybe what you described is more common than I'd think, so I won't dismiss it. Just seems like it's reading too many leaves for my taste. Not everything has to have a single cause. A project this size with this many moving parts is bound to have to reevaluate the timeline that was created 3 years ago.
But, I do apologize for jumping to conclusions. The internet is full of some crazy during times like these, so I had an itchy trigger finger.
You could indeed be correct however what you have to understand is that a game breaking bug could only present itself under a very specific set of circumstances that their QA team didn't come across.
Generally speaking these game breaking bugs are pretty uncommon though. No Man's Sky is a great example - I was playing it yesterday and the game crashed back to the PS4 menu 3 times in an hour, and that was probably because of a unique set of circumstances, so in this instance we have a game breaking bug that Hello Games's QA team missed as well as SCEE's etc QA teams.
Generally speaking these game breaking bugs are pretty uncommon though. No Man's Sky is a great example - I was playing it yesterday and the game crashed back to the PS4 menu 3 times in an hour, and that was probably because of a unique set of circumstances, so in this instance we have a game breaking bug that Hello Games's QA team missed as well as SCEE's etc QA teams.
Likes:
LeonBlade
The problems arise when people deal in absolutes when there is none.
It's is not 100 percent fact that the rumours(and 'evidence' so far for said rumour)are correct. Nor is 100 percent fact that the rumours are untrue.
People(and their comments) shouldn't be ridiculed or belittled for trying to debunk a rumour.
If though the evidence factually irrefutable and people are still blind to it then that's another story....
It's is not 100 percent fact that the rumours(and 'evidence' so far for said rumour)are correct. Nor is 100 percent fact that the rumours are untrue.
People(and their comments) shouldn't be ridiculed or belittled for trying to debunk a rumour.
If though the evidence factually irrefutable and people are still blind to it then that's another story....
Likes:
TwoDotsO
The main rub is that this "rumor" has been reported multiple times by multiple outlets with independent sources all who claim they've confirmed what the original outlet posted. So at this stage, while I definitely agree with you that nothing is 100%, we have something like a 90% probability of this being true and most reasonable people are inclined to believe it. Nobody should be bullying anybody but the writing is definitely on the wall and most posts with "proof" against the rumor look to be a bit desperate.
People looking for "possible" proofs to try to find out the legitimacy of the rumour should not be viewed as desperation. It should though if they deal in absolutes:
"This is obviously a photoshop edit. I used contrast correction to check. The rumour is false! I can finally go on living and not boycott Tabata for his lies!"
When it should be:
"Did some investigation. Used some contrast correction and there are tell tale signs that it could be photoshopped".
And if it's the case that "look at these losers taking their free time to try and find something that's not there
Go outside or something , kid",
I say piss off to that(not directing this at you, Death). Let people do wait the want with their free time. With their own life.
"This is obviously a photoshop edit. I used contrast correction to check. The rumour is false! I can finally go on living and not boycott Tabata for his lies!"
When it should be:
"Did some investigation. Used some contrast correction and there are tell tale signs that it could be photoshopped".
And if it's the case that "look at these losers taking their free time to try and find something that's not there
Go outside or something , kid",
I say piss off to that(not directing this at you, Death). Let people do wait the want with their free time. With their own life.
Likes:
TwoDotsO
I thought there were multiple independent outlets with separate sources confirming the delay. The "why" part would be interesting to know, but ultimately immaterial.
To my untrained eye, SE seems very confident with what they have already, delay or no. We'll get a better game, too. (Plus I'm traveling all of October, as it turns out)
To my untrained eye, SE seems very confident with what they have already, delay or no. We'll get a better game, too. (Plus I'm traveling all of October, as it turns out)
Likes:
LeonBlade
There are at least 4 separate sources of which I know of so far, 3 of which are GS employees and the 4th one being a non-retail source. The latter as well as one of the GS employees are sources of Jason from Kotaku, who has an excellent track record when it comes to leaks. The source from Gematsu is the same source who leaked the original release date to them. The last source is from Gamnesia and is someone who in the past correctly leaked information regarding the New 3DS as well as the release date of Battlefront.
The 2 separate sources from Jason alone should be pretty convincing by itself, add to that the other two as well as a plausible answer (with a picture) to the older dates on the promo material and I'm pretty damn confident that the delay is real.
The 2 separate sources from Jason alone should be pretty convincing by itself, add to that the other two as well as a plausible answer (with a picture) to the older dates on the promo material and I'm pretty damn confident that the delay is real.
Likes:
DrBretto
- Status