It was more of a question, as I don't play any of the annual franchises, but I'm pretty sure the last Battlefield had some awful bugs at launch.

All he's really saying here is that trying to force complex development into an absolute release date is bad.  If you're setting a date for a major release even before you start development then all kinds of bad things can happen.  Look at all the work that has to be done on an Assassin's Creed game, yet there is no way in hell they'd back off of that holiday release window.  He's saying that Marketing isn't asking Development when they'll be finished, he's saying that Marketing is telling development when they'll be finished.  It's a situation that has the potential to impact game quality.

Just to be clear, the football covers are a counter-example to this:

"In the early days of PlayStation, sequels were often seen as a wasted expense that rarely saw returns on the same level of the originals. Thus, the idea of putting them out seemed risky to the more financial-driven teams."

EDIT - If sequels were indeed seen as risky they wouldn't have tried not once but twice (first with Adidas Power Soccer and then with This is Football) to go against Fifa and PES in a market where sequels were the norm.

But anyway, sports games are banned? Okay. In the PS1 days we got 3 Crash Bandicoot games, three Spyros, three Wipeouts, four Ridge Racers (excluding other platforms), four Tomb Riders, three Tekkens and the list goes on and on. Sequels were the norm already in the PS1.

Just like most gamers.

I know what he is saying but I don't see many "victims" because of that. Unity was definitely a bad example but other games weren't ready, too, by release and were not annual. 

At least I agree that devs should get a little bit more freedom but it's their work and nobody is asking me if I want more time in my job to finish because the schedule is ridiculous - I don't get it anyway.

So apparently "Singing/Sports/gameshow" games don't count now when talking about yearly releases? According to you I mean.

Marketing groups that work for the big publishers and developers need to refocus their goal. I know these are bad times (well... not so much), but I thought the purpose of marketing was to create strong bonds between the company and the consumers by giving the latter what they want.

From the forum rules:

"Do not only post a link, or a copy-pasted article. At the very least avoid committing plagiarism by giving credit to the original author of the piece. Providing original context or commentary is also highly encouraged."

Please don't just post the article in future. Though, I do agree with what they're saying. I wouldn't go as far as to say I "hate" annualized franchises but for sure it's hurt AC and other series'.

For those who read the full article and understand the context of what he's talking about, no.  For those who only read the title or have an agenda to push?  Go for it, I guess.

Huh? I posted the article, the source of it and participated in the discussion.

If you want to make it fair you should suppose that GTA, The Elder Scroll and Fallout (or any other big game) will become PS4 exclusive, though. Annualized franchises vs long term development games. Let's see who would win. :p

Oh, I sure would stick with the PS4. Screw that annualized garbage. I gave up on AC already because of it.