- they say publishers don't seem to have learned from the game-breaking bugs of past Holidays, which saw serious issues with games like Halo: The Master Chief Collection, DriveClub and Assassin’s Creed Unity

- Pole to Win localisation director Chris Rowley warned:

“The run up to this Christmas will be no different to the last one,”

“Console games are expensive to develop, so missing a street date is not an acceptable situation to a publisher. Day One patches have become the norm over the last few years to try and address this, but the reality is that it often takes several patches where a title is significantly behind schedule.”

- Babel’s functionality QA director Mathieu Lachance said:

“We’ll see many games launching with large errors and bugs. It’s impossible to release a flawless game.   “In some cases, delaying a game can have a more devastating impact on the game and studios themselves than what quality concerns could have. It then becomes a balance between quality expectations and financial risk.”

- Universally Speaking QA manager James Cubitt says he has seen some improvements from game creators but believes it's not enough:

“It is getting better, but far from solved,”

“People need to stop seeing delays as a bad thing, both companies and the user base. The number of companies that just squeeze QA testing into the remaining period, without sufficient time to then fix the issues and re-test, is hurting their own titles in the long run.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/publishers-have-learnt-nothing-from-broken-game-fiasco-warn-bug-testers/0156002

This is all sorts of fucked up.

DriveClub had server load issues. Not quite the same as the other 2 games.

Also, publishers have learnt that gamers have learnt nothing from broken games.

I do wonder how truely game breaking bugs make it to print. I also assume a lot of QA people get fired after.

How will they ever learn if everyone preorders their games or rushing out to buy them Day 1 without knowing how the will be when it's finally released?

In many cases more than 50% of the total revenue from a game comes from it's first week, which lowers their incensitive to not cashgrab a badly finished game and move on to the next one instead of making sure the game works well at release, as it's often seen as a long-term investment. Only games which have very long legs, like most of Nintendo games or GTA are really getting the quality control they need before release, as in their case the first week takes a much lower percentage of the total sales, needing a polished game to keep the sales going.

As it is now, the publishers don't need to change or learn anything, they are making money already. Look at Assassin's Creed Unity, a broken mess which still sells millions of copies. And this weird phenomenon where gamers thank and praise a dev/pub for releasing a patch when the game should have released in that patched state. Supply is not the problem but demand.

Assassins creed, battlefront, fallout are my picks for the games to be the most buggy and glitchy at launch.

Hardly takes a research firm to come up with that grand analysis