You wrote it already. A delay is much better than a half-broken game. Deadlines make no sense, anyway.
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Because budgets. People have to get paid and you can't just keep paying them if you don't get any more money because your product is due, so you need to plan ahead. Not every company can afford to delay a product, so I guess in this case they're either already filthy rich or skipping payments in favor of product quality.
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Or maybe they just have proper management so they can afford the delay, without being filthy rich. Also, like Nyoko7 said, a game is never "due", these kind of deadlines are purely artificial constraints. Finally, the idea that shipping an unfinished product is always better from a financial point of view is highly debatable, with the speed information circulates nowadays.
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As said, without further funding past the deadline (which isn't arbitrary, it's just the maximum amount of time since the beginning of development you can go with the money you get) there isn't any further polishing and you'll have to release. In the case of stupid fatcats like EA ofc, that wouldn't be a problem, they're just in for the revenue of their shareholders.
However, it's not just about proper or improper management, you can't just say "it'll be done by then" and then prolong as much as you wish unless your staff like to go unpaid.
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In order for a game to make money, they also need to estimate the sales they will have on the title, and weigh that against their proposed budget.
It's not just "well, let's make a good thing and take as long as we want and hope that magically we make the money back!" That's an incredibly simple-minded way to look at game development.
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You make some valid points, but they are very specific to the way the game making world works. It's far from obvious that being able to pay a company's employees should directly depend on the date of shipping of the project they're working on. It's true you shouldn't set a target and then keep delaying it, but you also shouldn't be forced to set a (often unrealistic) target. And deadlines are arbitrary when they target the holiday season or a certain quarter of the year. If you make Christmas decorations for a living, or if you're training for the NY marathon, you have non-arbitrary deadlines. :)
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but you also shouldn't be forced to set a (often unrealistic) target
It's important to distinguish between two types of unrealistic targets. The first is when the developers know there is no way they can get the software done in time or in the budget they have, but agree to the target anyway.
The second is when the developers think they can get it done in time. But they run into unexpected problems during development. Problems that take a lot of work to fix.
The second is what I think happened with AC Unity.
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CD Projekt own GOG. That means they can use the profits from GOG to to fund their game development. If it makes enough money they don't need investors to fund their games. Which means they don't have to release an unfinished game, should the game take longer to finish than expected they don't need to beg investors for more money. They just get it from their GOG profits.
It's the same reason Valve time exists.
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Actually they already planned to give us some additional content for free after the game released. They plan to release 16 DLCs for free, but now that they delayed those might just get incorporated into the game.
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I can definitely empathize with the annoyance of having a game you want pushed back. I really want Undertale to come out, but the game has been pushed back again and agaaaaain. But at least with this, hopefully the game with be super awesome. I'm so excited for it, I can't wait.
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Grand Theft auto V was Suppose to Be Released on STEAM this December 2014 but Developers ran into some Barrier........ DEADline Set to Febuary 2015
PS Half Life 3 {3/3/2016}
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They won't downgrade at least on PC... Remember W2? Witcher 2's graphics still surpasses some recently released AAA games.
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Read the title and almost thaught "now the shitstorm starts" but no! good that we are all on the same level here ^^ There are not many publishers and Devs i put my trust in but CD Project are on of them :)
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They(CDProjekt) might be afraid of the backlash Ubisoft receive after Unity.
If you remember, Ubisoft received at least 10% drop in stocks. CDProjekt can't afford that.
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I doubt it.
After coming out with the free Enhanced versions for Witcher 1 and 2 (which we all know other companies would have tried to milk more cash for), people probably feel more at ease with them.
Fuck, they actually make an effort to deliver even after you bought the game.
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Hard to say but i don´t think so. It´s not unusual that triple A games got a release delay and Ubisoft... come on lol It´s Ubisoft ;) The gaming world should be aware of the fact that you shouldn´t treat gamers like Ubisoft-EA and Activision does
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Which backlashes were Valve afraid of that caused Valve time to become a thing ?
What I think has happened is that CD Projekt are making enough money through GOG that they can afford to delay Witcher 3 to polish it up. They aren't looking at running out of money or investors complaining to force a release before they finish it.
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they are doing it XD
May 19th is the new release date I think, check out their facebook or sth :P
but as people earlier mentioned - I'd rather wait and get a really good game than have to deal with BS that almost all of the games have these days...
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So you're going to cancel your pre-order because they decided to delay the release so they can fix any bugs before releasing it? What kind of backwards logic is that.
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It seems reasonable. He preordered because they promised a game on one date. Now they have announced that they can't deliver on that date, so he needs to reconsider his preorder.
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so it's worse publisher than eg. UBI or EA because they won't release broken game on date they promised?
<facepalm almost broke my nose>
Of course it's his right to cancel preorder if any of agreement is broken but in my opinion it says highly of publisher that they risk money from preorders and falling on stock market but try to deliver full game instead of broken crap (AC, Simcity, Battlefield, Batman Origin...)
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No. Others should have given any preorder customers a refund option once they realized that they couldn't complete their promises.
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Most retailers I know of already permit cancelling pre-orders. Especially if no money has actually exchanged hands yet. Online is a different situation. I think GOG allows it, but I'm not sure.
Also, those two didn't pick up Labargoth's sarcasm.
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They permit canceling preorders before launch. But not after it.
The Witcher 3 delay is known before launch, so the preorders can be canceled. The public didn't find out how bad those other games were until after launch, so they couldn't be canceled. That is the difference.
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Preorders probably have probably been really good so they can afford to do this. The reason games like Assassins Creed, Halo Master Chief Collection and Battlefield 4 were released so buggy was because they were aiming for Christmas time shopping, and would have been faced with making less money at a later date or holding the game for a year until the next Christmas shopping season started.
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good on them, delays are a good thing most of the time.
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I think I'm going to preoder Witcher 3 now. It will be third preorder I've ever made.
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The Witcher 3 delayed... again.
Title says everything.
Better release later than fail Ubisoft.
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