Although the ability to patch a game can be very useful in making a good game better, many bad developers take advantage of patching to release broken games. Because of this, I hesitate to buy some guys on release because I know it will take some time for their problems to be patched. Therefore, I wait until perfection.

/huggles

For most developers I would say some where between the two positions ...

If you're developing a "premium game" that will certainly sell 2 million (or more) units then taking your time to develop a "perfect" game is worthwhile; because you will protect the reputation of the series, and then next version of the series will certainly sell 2 million (or more) units.

On the other hand, most developers produce games which will struggle to break even and the time the spend fixing the game will have diminishing returns on the number of additional sales. If they produce a game that works, is enjoyable, and is free of critical bugs then they will probably maximize sales; and they can patch more minor bugs after the game has been released.

meh, worrying about sales during development usually makes a suck game.

Wait till its actually ready. If I buy a game and it is full of bugs I will not be buying from that company again.

I prefer waiting for a perfect game, but that doesn't mean that a patched game can't become perfect, see Diablo II.

In this case you're waiting for content to be made not bug fixes or balance changes. So in this context it is probably better to release and update than it is to wait as long as they have.

well as much as i agree that you can't rush things and you should always take the time needed to perfect your product as much as possible, I gotta disagree with you. It's not so much that devs choose to rush things. They've got deadlines to meet and things often fall behind schedule.

The devs you listed as "having respect for, for taking their time" are huge, proven names (kojima,ueda,yamauchi). These guys have a lot of power in terms of choosing to delay their games (MGS, TLG, GT5) which are huge franchises that are typically deemed projects that must succeed, even at the cost of big delays.

The culprit behind all this is ineffectiveness and inefficiency. For that reason someone like yamauchi cannot be praised imo. My point is you might have the next yamauchi working for small company X working on title Y. If company X can't afford to keep delaying this new franchise Y, then production is stopped... game is released. Game Y (w/ tons of potential) fails. Everyone loses.

^

i didn't understand what you meant in your last paragraph.

all i meant is you may have a new up and coming developer who could be the next kojima or whoever. but say he's working on a great idea in his first game and he keeps going back to his bosses and asking for delays like yamauchi has been doing with gt5. this dev will be told to shove it and release the damn game. The game won't do well and he'll prob. not amount to much. All I meant is that, to be a good developer, you don't need to only have good ideas and such, but you need to also be efficient, be able to prioritise and be good at managing work and managing your employees. Constant delays w/ gt5 tells me Yamauchi is good at none of those things.

Of course though, franchises like mgs and gt are exceptions and so konami and sony would go through smaller hoops and be more flexible to accomodate kojima and yamauchi's wishes for delay requests. The really big franchises will be given the extra perks to make the game as good as possible since its the franchise defining the company. But kojima and yamauchi would still do well to respect the company and not constantly spend their money repeatedly delaying games.