Disclaimer: This is not a rant against delays. I'm not saying delays do not help to finish the product. It's a rant against people claiming that a delay is a good move and that the game is better off with it. It's not a good move, it's their god damn duty to delay a game if it's not in a playable state.

I'm sick and tired of this narrative.

People claiming that companies are so smart to delay a game because they have more time to fix it. Well I call bullshit. Games aren't delayed because the developers want to make it perfect, they are delayed because they cannnot even be released in the state that they're in. It's not about making the games perfect, it's about making them actually playable.

Point 1: How would you know what things they are "fixing" during the extended time period? How would you know that it's for the good of the game. For all we know they could use that time to perfect their DRM or closing more marketing deals.

Point 2: A lot of games get delayed without us even knowing it. Are the games better because of it? No one is making that claim. Is a game that is released "on time" less perfect because they should've taken more time? No, because we don't know what happened during production. People will always say that they should've taken more time to polish a game but that's not how it works. They're only trying to make it as playable as possible.

Point 3: Longer development time does not mean higher quality experience.

Point 4: Look at all the games that have been released. Any of them close to perfect? How about those games that were delayed because they wanted to make them better? Any difference to games that release on time? The answer is no.

At the end of the day it comes down to this: There are 2 reasons for a product to be delayed. Someone sucks at project management or someone sucks at producing the product. Take your pick. But just don't expect games to be better because of delays.

So just please don't give companies credit for sucking at their job.

Definitely didn't help Watch_Dogs. I love how Pikmin 3 is reviewed better. W101 is reviewed better than the XBO version. Beautiful. Welcome to next gen, guys.

I'll propose reason #3 -- Games are being moved out of certain dates due to competition and/or perceived lack of exposure. I think most games are delayed even when they could have been released at the scheduled time, and that the tweaks done in that extended period are minor.

Most games get bumped because the publisher thinks that competition will hurt the sales. It is the same with movies and their release dates. Once a strong competitor locks in the date, everybody else scatters...

Because many people will buy a game (go to the movies) based on box-office/sales charts, and also you get free advertisement with titles like this weeks "Wolfenstein takes #1 spot in the UK". This will certainly generate better future sales than if it had come in 2nd behind Watch Dogs with the exact same amount of sales (and profits to the publisher)  ----- just to make clear, it's a reference to headlines and release windows, and I used that game as an example only.

So your point is to say that delays are good for games eventually

I would say this counts as reason one. If they couldn't predict or expect there to be competition in that time frame it's a failure of planning. If they were unsure they probably shouldn't have announced the release date so early.

I'm not sure if you are referring to a particular game, but very rarely do games get bumped after actually having a set release date. Most of them get bumped from quarter to quarter or from one fiscal year to another.

If they do get bumped from a specific date, it is usually a very short bump, like Titanfall. And we are all pretty sure it has to do everything with giving more console exclusivity to X1 version than fixing the X360 game.

My point is that delays in development are a natural process in most games and shouldn't be applauded. In the end it's just an extension of the production time to reach the point they were planning to reach to begin with and not beyond that point.

So you're saying that every delayed game could be released in the same state even without the delay?

This is obviously sometimes true. but there are many games that were released that could of done with more time in development, Anything by Bethesda for a start. So Devs can release Buggy messes if they want, but they shouldnt, they should take more time to release something thats at least playable especailly if they want to build a franchise.

Bu yeah even in a case where delaying a game makes it better, there was still a problem in the product management. What Pubs and Devs need to do is stop announcing release dates unless there pretty damn certain. 

Delays are defind by consumers as pushing back the time frame frame they previously announced. It doesn't have to be an exact date. So if they announced Fall 2013 and then are pushing it to Spring 2014 just because there for some reason suddenly was too much competition in Fall then that's a failure of planning. No company wants to announce delays so it's an err on their side. No matter the reason for the delay.