The Great Glitch Crisis of 2014 

Wait, people WANT annual releases? Who? A bunch of attention span-less 12 year olds? Fuck yearly releases. Give me a better game I can play for longer. You know, one that is complete and not broken. Preferably enjoyable. It's amazing that developers don't realize that a lot of people are sick of low quality games that get worse and worse every development cycle. And equal shame falls upon people that keep buying these games. They're only perpetuating and reinforcing to game publishers that they're doing the right thing, business-wise. It's really not helping.

I don't see it getting any better, in this age of instant access and short attention spans, consumers are likely to get increasingly impatient with their gaming apatite.

This was posted at the beginning of this year, and the problem is ongoing. Batman was a fiasco... but one thing was different: Steam Refunds. As refunds for extremely ineffective games become commonplace for both PC & Consoles, I expect publishers to get a lot more gun-shy about pushing broken games out the door.

I started watching with the MGS3 in depth analysis and haven't stopped watching. Please keep up the high quality work.

This is by far the smartest channel in the gaming community

the problem is that the gaming market has changed significantly. We (the people that watch this show and would never buy a AAA on launch and are tired of the same COD every year) are now the minority among gamers. Its best for us as the more savvy game consumers to search for great titles from good studios that are not that mainstream and support them in developing great games. And spend less time worrying or bitching about AAA games from big studios that are now so mainstream that we no longer have an real input in them.

With Steam around that brings 60$ games down to 2 measly bucks after just a few years there's no reason to pay for a game when it's not even done. Hold your fucking wallets people, there are millions of super great games from the past that's just a few dollars and clicks away.

Nintendo doesn't fuck around. When you buy Smash Bros, you GET Smash Bros, not some broken mess.

Man, maybe I am part of some extreme minority, but I don't want these yearly releases. Take the time and get it right. I've been saying that for years. It's part of why I am never annoyed when studios like Naughty Dog or Rocksteady push a game back. They don't release a game until it's done right.

I've said it for years, until morons quit buying CoD, AC, Madden, and FIFA every year, we will never get the amount of quality games we used to. It's all about sequels and how fast they can pump them out. FC4 was mediocre at best and they're already talking about the next one but they are asking fans to choose what direction to take it. Consumers have to wake up and stop buying this crap. MCC is still a broken mess, so bad I had to hard reset my system just to play the campaigns offline yet people are throwing $250 at a mystery box Halo 5 limited edition that has no known contents. What's sad is the beta for 5 has the same issues as MCC...

How is the x86 architecture unfamiliar? These consoles are just PCs in pretty boxes at this point. The hardware is not nearly a viable excuse for all these broken games.

This generation of gamers and gaming culture simply has no standards. It's like poorly made products that get more and more pricey are becoming the norm for today's society.

My one man solution to this, for me, is to get hyped for games, find out the release date, add 7 days and then on that seventh day after release, do some actual research from PLAYERS, not corporate shills like those on Gamasutra and then consider whether or not I want the game. I've estimated this approach has saved me hundreds over the years not to mention the lack of headaches. The only way this damage can be repaired is by a gaming crash. I'm dead fucking serious.

This is why i'm glad the Witcher 3 has been delayed

That known shippable thing is completely correct, I work in QA and the amount of bugs which the fucking devs let through were unforgivable *ahembigredbuttonahem*

Only Nintendo can save us of this mediocrity. Apart of all haters, big N still is the best developer out there.

I think a lot of the issue is this generation and the previous generation had a LOT of people getting into video games for the first time. People who didn't grow up in the 16-bit and 32-bit eras back when games needed to work properly out of the gate. They don't know any better so they think this is just how it's suppose to be.

It's things like what we see in this video that argument my stance whenever someone says "Why doesn't Nintendo just go multiplatform?". For all it's many shortcomings, mistakes, and obsessions with twisting the norm more than it should, if there's something Nintendo hardly fails in is Polish; And no, I do not mean games for their console, like Rise of Lyric, but games developed by them most of the time are well polished. Rarely do you heard of Nintendo games having glitches, and the ones that do have them few and far between, and never game-breaking. This comes because of the freedom they have as being their own company working for their own consoles. If they think a game needs polish they WILL delay it. IF even that is not enough they will delay it AGAIN to fix it. This is something that, while you do see in multiplatform releases, is very uncommon with them. Now imagine Nintendo going multiplatform as a game developer or publisher. Now not only having to deal with their own group of shareholders, but also the shareholders of Sony and Microsoft breathing on their necks. As Bunnyhop says, the deadline situation and consumer hungry while not make every game meet this fate, would lead to an increase on Nintendo games being rushed for the sake to appeasing both consumers and higher ups. And I don't know about you, but part of what I feel of Nintendo's "magic" is the fact very rarely do I have to turn on a Mario game at launch and meet a galore of glitches only for days later wait for a black screen with a bunch of patch notes in it.

We need to stop pre ordering games

This is the reason why I don't buy games day 1. I lost faith with the AAA developers, there is no more quality-control. And this is also one of the reasons why I will never have a PS4 and Xbox One. I don't understand how Sony and Microsoft can accept broken games to be released on their platform. I thought these big companies had standards. Thanks for the video George, I really like your channel.

Funny to see so many people in the comment section thinking the industry's going to crash again.

Meanwhile, the still popular (in Japan) Tetris The Grandmaster 3: Terror Instinct which is tetris on drugs, runs on 10 year old Celeron PC's. But I guess 8 cores are too much to handle UBISOFT'S awesome tetris version.

You could say it was a crisis of infinite glitches?

7:08 Hold on. People WANT to see yearly sequels? Last time I checked, the majority of the internet HATED yearly sequels. Where's this guy pulling THAT out of?

Inquisition launched without a hitch? That thing had skipping voices, crashes, dialogue not loading for a minute, and much more! EDIT: And never buy anymore Ubisoft games! They are hopeless.

I returned to E.Y.E and Quake in 2014, I didn't buy a single game last year.

It really pays to wait. You don't need to buy these games right away, especially that most are available for download, meaning they will never run out. When Battlefield 4 came out, I didn't buy it right away because of the glitches. A year later after it came out, I got it. And not only was it glitch-free, but I got the Premium Edition, meaning I got everything for $60, while everyone else have to pay $110.

Thank god for steam refunds.

I feel like I've said this many times in different contexts, but the internet-age and the ease and price of patching the game online, while incredibly convenient, seems to attack all the old values of complete, meticulously polished game experience. 20 years back a gamebreaking bug would've been a death senctence to any game. It doesn't matter in big picture if informed gamers know what's up and know not to buy into AAA-launches, for every case of that there's ten parents buying a highly anticipated big release to a kid. I mean of course the game works, it's a big thing and on shelves. Why would they put broken things there, someone would've blown the whistle! I kinda wish every game journo would review games the way they were shipped and not how they're "going" to look in 8 weeks. Maybe that would motivate the publisher at least a little bit to not force devs to shit out their labor.

DON'T PRE-ORDER GAMES, PEOPLE!

Also, Americans' infatuation with consoles over PC is partly to blame for this. It's easier (not to mention cheaper) to develop for PC, there is much less consumer pressure (because of new releases almost every day, and services like Steam or GOG, there is never a shortage of good games). Because of console wars, there is enormous pressure on the delelopers (especially developers of exclusive titles) to shit out games as fast as possible. No matter how bad it is on release, people will still buy it and the company will still make profit. Simply because there aren't a thousand more games those people could rather be playing. Although I guess this is the wrong channel to preach the PC master race, so I'll shut up now :)

Amazing video. But still... how do you manage to fuck up Tetris this badly? I know a bit of coding and can make a shitty clone of tetris, but a triple-A studio releases Tetris with shiny graphics and it ends up being a glitchy mess? I can understand that a triple-A game with a massive budget has some glitches/connection issues at launch, but a simple game or a re-release/HD upgrade? It's ridiculous.

"People want to see a Assassins Creed every year, people want to see a Call of Duty every year" I don't know, do people really fucking want that? Why not, say, two years? Spend that extra dev time to make your game really shine and make people clamor for more? FFS it's the age of the Internet, if your player base is really losing interest in the first year 1) learn why (learn from your mistakes) and 2) push out compelling DLC to keep people playing. Who am I kidding, of course this will never happen until the inevitable crash.

Why is it that people feel the need to get hyped over new releases? I mean in all honesty I buy 2 or 3 new releases ever year. While most of the time i'm playing much older games I missed out on. The most recent new release I bought was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and before that it was No Man's Sky until I refunded it. Even then I don't think No Man's Sky should even count, cause the only reason I bought it because I was curious, but I still had a sneaking suspicions it wouldn't live up to the hype. And my suspicions were correct. But being hyped up for the latest Ubisoft game or the latest COD is something I'll never understand.

As far as I'm aware, thank the Lord that this bad launch thing is mostly over and done with. I could count the number of poorly launched games on one hand now compared to the fingers, and toes and nostrils I had to count three years ago. Now companies are crunching their employees to release the game mostly bug free but on schedule. One evil for another, possibly greater one. Now if only consumers can learn patience and encourage developers to delay their games so we don't have crunching game devs or bad launches.

Unfamiliar console architecture? How come is x86 unfamiliar?

The thing is, the people watching these videos or reading articles about waiting till release for reviews, not pre-ordering because of its impact to the games, usually don't pre-order or buy before reviews. It's young people between 12-17 who wan't their annual release of Call of Duty or Assassins Creed who don't care about its potential impacts because their parents buy it for them. people who make these videos seem to be talking to the wrong people, chances are the main demographic of these triple A games aren't reading or watching editorials on the impact of hasting buying.

-"2 more months of testing and the game should be ready for launch" -"Are you kidding me?! that stuff costs money and it's already October, just release the piece of shit, those idiots will buy it anyway!"

Far Cry 4 still has a permanent glitch on my PC, the landscape and roads have a visible wire frame mesh on them, I'm not sure what causes it, it is very distracting.

I ended here thanks to a Facebook link. I'm not a gamer, well let's say I'm not a "hardcore gamer" as the people who are here. Reading the comments i find quite interesting the gamer culture (if that's a way to say it). Some people hate, others are in dissapoiment for something very ironic. The game industry are not making games for people who enjoy, are making games for people who only buy, sorry if i don't explain myself. But i kinda like how you guys have real valid points, more than any politic in this world.

Maybe the gaming industry as a whole needs to take a big hit. Now I'm not talking about something like the Video Game Crash of 1983 here but I think a blow to the industry could help. Obviously that seems a little strange and I could be talking out of my ass here, I know almost nothing about economics and business markets but just looking at the market I feel it could help. Now before I actually start explaining myself let me say one more thing, I'm not talking about mobile games I'm talking more so about "core" games, you know anything form Assassin's creed to Pokemon (which yes may be casual but it's on a dedicated gaming machine and at least a decent portion of it's player base is "hardcore" gamers). I'm not talking about things like Farmville or Candy Crush. Now if you're still around let me actually begin. First there's Steam and the horrendous amount of low-quality games it's churning out, very similar in fact to the Crash of 1983, and it's not just Steam with shit like Meme Run getting on Wii U (which I don't think is as bad as most people but still it's a poster child for bad games on the Wii U Eshop) even consoles aren't safe from trashy low-quality games churned out not in a year or two but rather in a month or two. A hard hit to the video game industry would hopefully make people learn their lesson like they did in the crash of '83, that bad games may make you a quick buck, but they're not sustainable because even the dumbest of consumers can only be fucked over so many times. Also how does a market crash in the first place? less consumers and/or less whales (whale is a term for a single consumer that spends horrendous amounts of money, such as a Nintendrone [like myself, I'm willing to admit it, which is the first step towards recovery] buying everything Nintendo publishes just because it has their seal of approval on it). Less people to buy the shitty games means the game is less likely to make back its development cost. Then we have the big budget AAA games that have been coming out underwhelming expectations and buggy as all hell. Well, if the industry had a mini-crash then again first thing's first, less consumers, less whales, but also people would be throwing less money into marketing their game since they wouldn't be as confident in it making back the money (although i suppose that's why they market it to all hell in the first place so maybe that's a mute point but let's just say I'm right here) so then games wouldn't be over hyped as much. Also if there was a mini-crash budgets may decrease so annual series would may become bi-annual allowing for more development time and less bugs. (also better games but I'll address this point more in my conclusion, for now I'm focusing on the market). Also as I said earlier, LESS CONSUMERS!!! but what kinds of consumers would leave the market, well we're already talking about hardcore gamers so I can't say casual-hardcore gamers, but I do have a good phrase to separate the types of gamers that would leave the market and the type that would stay. RU-vid-gamers would stay, commercial-gamers would leave. By this I mean RU-vid-gamers are what we are, the kinds of people that are keeping up with gaming and are making more informed decisions on our purchase (although we've all bought a meme run or two, as well as an AC:Unity or two) while commercial-gamers are the people who see a cool commercial and go buy a game, or look at the back of the cover and think the game sounds good, or know that COD is what all their friends are playing so it must be good, right? With the uninformed gamers gone there would be less people buying anything that's a big name or looks funny. ANYWAY, remember when I said in my conclusion I'd bring up the idea of better games, well after this Odyssey of a RU-vid comment here it is. Let's go back to the Crash of '83 once more, how did the market recover? Well, Nintendo came out with the NES, innovative, high quality first-party games and of course the famous Nintendo Seal of Approval, which means little to nothing now but back in the day it meant a hell of a lot, you had to make a legitimately good game to get that seal and to get on the NES and so while a heck of a lot of bad games did indeed end up on the NES they were at least competent and consumers weren't getting fucked left and right. Well, to fix the crash that's what will happen again, AC will have to get good or die, COD will have to stay good or die (AW was apparently good), Mario will have to start innovating again, everything will have to start innovating again, Not only could a crash help the market, it could help the consumers. also if you took the time to read this monster I would love a response, just to know i didn't write his for nothing

I wonder if there is such a thing as consumer culture in this context. When you're talking about tens of millions of people in a global market, many of whom are children, there are incredible information asymmetries at work. Even repeated, broken, never patched releases of AAA games seem unlikely to impact the purchasing decisions of children and young teenagers. Any more than Hollywood's endless release cycle of repetitive, unimaginative super hero films will dent the enthusiasm of this pretty undiscerning, advertising vulnerable audience. There are always more kids less familiar with the studio or even the publisher responsible, than the marketing push and 'brand recognition' of a AAA shooter or the latest 'Ass Creed' type franchise.

The publishers trying to meet yearly quotas and deadlines is dumb, but I don't see how blaming the consumers is the default answer whenever a game fails. That has never, ever made sense to me.

Thats why you should never, ever, EVER buy ANY AAA at launch. If you wait a month or 2 the price will drop and most of the bugs SHOULD be fixed.

Consoles go home, you're drunk

How in hell can you fuck up Tetris... I'm studying to be a programmer and programming Tetris was our assingment in our second class! Well well... 2014 really was a bad year. And As you said George, there really isn't much point at it changing. Thougt I could see the rise of Indie games into popularity solving a lot of these problems. If publishers learn to put their money on more small indie projects they would not only divide the risk of only betting on one huge project. They would also have something to give to players while they wait for the next installment of a AAA (that then could be pushed forward). Futhermore indie games show developers that more can be done with less. That a more focused game usually is better and that photorealism and shit like that usually isnt something worth trying to achive. I see some publishers start to do this (for example Square Enix has started a kickstarter-like thing I think) and the rest of them really should follow. Still I know indie games are not "perfect". Last year sadly was a year of horrible releases and behaviours from indie developers and even the good ones are really starting to feel a little "same" if you know what I mean.

Here we have the perfect reason why i like Nintendo, Ladies and Gentlemen. Same like Blizzard in the early days they didn't give a crap about the whining community and released their games when they were DONE. Yes, you may wait a year longer for your game, but you might get a game that lasts more than a year on your system due to the good quality and well-balanced content.

I think the problem lies in the fact that no one goes in-depth for what they're buying. People buy the game near launch, play it, and hope for the best. Most people buying these games don't use RU-vid to the extent you or I do (SBH's criminally low subscriber base) where we can look for decent opinions and gameplay footage and ascertain whether it is worth our time and money. Some just hear the concept of the game, get hyped, like and invest in it, which is fine of course, until publishers start exploiting a business model of selling incomplete products of said good concept to the consumer. I guess the irony here is with all this savvy technology where ignorance is not an excuse anymore, people still fall for this nonsense.

Being a miser waiting for steam sales has served me well

Excellent analysis. The reason why game companies don't learn their lesson is because people keep buying AAA releases on launch day (or even PRE-ORDER) without waiting for reviews. Not buying the game in the first place sends a stronger message than buying it and then complaining in forums later.

Great video, though I don't agree much with the fact that you said that the new console architectures contribute to these glitchy games. The new consoles use x86 based processors, basically common computer architecture.

@ 7:07 - who exactly is demanding yearly releases of popular games? I don't know anyone who thinks this is a good idea. It's the greediness of the publisher who wants yearly releases, this is one reason why so many games are broken at launch. Developers are rushed to complete a project that should require two years at minimum. They think it's okay to release a broken game and can just update it down the road. it's unacceptable and I refuse to pre-order games any longer, especially after the MCC fiasco.

Clearly this show how dumb most players are, they keep buying in to the hypes! And clearly most of them don't earn their own money either, if they did...

You know how to stop this? Stop share holder's power over your company. I am of the mindset; that someone who does not work for the company or understand what the company is about, should have ZERO decisions in anything that gets done whether they own stock or not.

Ubisoft isn't a publisher who you should trust to buy day one from

Some of the blame needs to be put at the door of "game journalists" for their handling of information given to them from developers. They are the machine that hypes the new releases and pushes people to pre order these broken games. Game developers make a bucket load through pre orders so why should they care if the game is buggy on release, its all about profit.

I was wondering the same thing with that Tetris until I saw Ubisoft!

I think currently nintendo and apple have the highest standard for their hardware + software. I will forever back them. Though, i'm still waiting for the update that will allow me to lock the phone or multitask on the iphone while a youtube video plays

... and here we are in 2015 with Fallout 4 being super buggy and 60$ multiplayer only Rainbow 6 Siege netcode being so bad that I dind't even buy it even if I loved the gameplay from the beta... this is getting ridiculous.

Man, remember the days when big games came out and didn't had any glitches or had little to none? When games TOOK there 2-3 years of time to get these problems? Or when Games were about the story? The lore? Not who can make the next COD or Halo game and cash in? Those where good times.

*hugs Wii U and it's flawless 1st party titles*

To all saying that this generation of games is all about releasing broken, over priced crap, you clearly have forgotten about the 80s and 90s where developers frequently released utter crap that rarely actually worked, and charged absurd prices for it.

WII U MASTER RACE

Screw Tetris PS4. Tetris (PSP mini) is where it's at! The controls are smooth, allowing for fast gameplay, the music is fun and the design is nice and clean.

I love how people throw around the word 'netcode' without knowing what the fuck that means. BF4's problems had less to do with what you people call 'netcode', and more to do with the actual game's code. People throwing blame on the netcode just gave DICE an easy excuse for why their game didn't work.

Funny how this vid was made before NMS. Would love to hear his opinion after the clusterfuck!

I can't necessarily put the full blame on publishers, I put the majority of blame on consumers. Consumers have become McDonald consumers in the gaming scene with people pre-ordering everything and demanding DLC as soon as possible. Publishers realised this and responded with pre-loading and season pass pre-orders. Games are more grind orientated than ever with micro-transactions implemented to speed up the process. Why are they getting progressively more common in games? Because people buy them. People love quick and easy access to their games and content even if they risk buying a broken game.

Someone posted this in a conversation about Cyberpunk 2077 - still relevant 5 years later

devs have learnt to over hype their games way before release dates, and hell it works for them. People just can't to give their hard earned monies to the developers to ease their fever a little! It's just sad, but I'v seen grown men actually pre-ordering games months before they are duo to release! so weird...

This is definitely not improving. This year isn't over and we already have some legendary examples of unstable/bugged games being rushed out before they were ready. Mortal Kombat X on PC, Ultra SFIV on PS4, Batman Arkham Knight on PC, and more recently Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5.

7:05 "People are still demanding these yearly releases" Well sir you never asked me, i DO NOT want to see these god damn boring yearly releases with absolutely no innovation. So stop talking out your ass, i would rather wait several years for a great game like Skyrim than play Assassins Creed every year with the same lame ass mechanics every year with next to none changes, hence why i have only played 2 of them and got bored and never bought one since, same goes for Far Cry 4 as i hear it is just Far Cry 3 with elephants (Total biscuit made a great comment about Ubisoft that someone there has a serious problem with a Tower fetish and its bloody true!). I made my first pre orders in 2014 ever after more than 30 years gaming, i will never do it again. For me 2014 has been the biggest bore ever, i bought my PS4 "next gen" console and spent more time remembering the fun i had on the last gen consoles PS3 and the 360 than these new consoles. I hope to god 2015 is better!!! He is correct though it is a bloody problem and i wish people would stop buying in to them but not everyone wants them!

People just need to stop having children. That's like, a quarter to half of the problem right there. Their children are the ones screaming for these games, so people demand games to be released, even though the games are entirely unfinished. How is a game that's buggy as shit worth my 60 dollars? Unfinished game, Early Access games like on Steam, etc. Trick question, because it's not worth anything over maybe 5 dollars, ten at the most, and my most favorable answer: zero dollars. It's an extremely bad practice to release a game before you're finished working on it and also drop development, but still release the game because YOU think that the game is worth the money, because of the time you put into it. Finish making the game and bugtesting it, and then release it to the masses. This is how it was done in the N64 era, the PS1 and PS2 era, Gamecube, everything. Those were quality games. Now? Now everything is all about grabbing money and hoping for the best. This has been the last 5 years or so, maybe 6. However, America or Japan will never do anything about this. America is just a bunch of lazy, fat, stuff-my-mouth-with-cheetos-all-the-time people and in general society, while Japan, where Sony is based, is extremely a conformist society and nobody will ever step out of line, or you will be killed. I can say the same for the UK, and probably most of Europe. I'm also calling myself this because if I make a disturbance you better believe I'm going to jail. I have a fiancee and 2 dogs to support, I can't afford to go to jail. This is where the problem lies, in that people need to think for themselves instead of going to get what all their buddies are going to go get and waste 60 dollars on a broken game. Preorders will never, ever stop unless retailers stop accepting preorders. But there is NOBODY in the world who doesn't love free money. NOBODY. And that's essentially what it is, is that preorders are free money for development teams, along with "early access" crap for PC gamers. It's fucking ridiculous. Sure there are dev teams out there who respect the fact people are paying money for an unfinished product, but there are so many games on Steam that developers have dropped and are not working on and are completely unfinished that it's ridiculous. And these people got anywhere from 500 dollars to 10,000 dollars in sales off this unfinished game. That is ridiculous. People need to wait for a product, and then purchase it. Would you buy half an orange from a supermarket? What about half of a can of soup? What about HALF of a TOY for a child? Not a game, a toy, an actual, physical toy. You wouldn't buy any of these right? So why would you buy half or 3/4ths of a game? "Well they're adding features..." Bull. You watch your money go down the drain with these crappy early access games and I'll sit on my hands and wait and watch you burn and become homeless.

Someone should make a tv show on the gaming industry. In the style of Newsroom/WestWing/The Wire. PS. Recommend all of those shows highly. If I had to choose between the latest episode of Game of Thrones and an old episode of The Wire. IT WOULD BE A HARD CHOICE

Notice how none of these games were made by Nintendo? That's because they actually polish their games and make sure that they are finished before releasing them, unlike everyone else.

There is such an easy and simple solution to this problem: *SIMPLY DON'T BUY ANY GAME THAT HASN'T BEEN REVIEWED FOR A FULL MONTH AFTER RELEASE* If a game is shit, reviews destroy it, so it won't sell. It forces publishers to let developers finish their game, because only the great games will sell. The hype train and EA won't tell you a game's quality, it's the reviewers and early patch counts that give you that information!

Pay close attention to what he says at 7:15; people want to see a new Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty every year so that they have something to buy their kids for christmas or something like that. Notice a pattern there? Those two franchises (along with Battlefield) are extremely popular among preteens and teenaged boys. I know because I am in high school, and almost everybody at my school who plays games, aside from my geekier friends who take gaming seriously, don't read/watch game reviews or even fucking KNOW ABOUT ANY GAMES OTHER THAN ASSASSIN'S CREED AND CALL OF DUTY AND BATTLEFIELD AND WATCH DOGS. They're all casuals who, along with their parents, know nothing about gaming and keep buying these shitty repetitive games annually because they want something to give their kids or their friends for christmas or birthdays etc., and they are too stuck in their fucking comfort zone (or just can't be bothered) to try something new. I'm not saying hardcore/serious gamers are without some blame, but it seems to me that the #1 thing that damages video game franchises, as well as the quality of each individual game, and thus contributing to these broken glitchy launches, is when they become popular among preteen and teenaged audiences who don't listen to reviews or critics, or take gaming seriously as a hobby at all for that matter.

Here after George’s somehow “anti consumer” viral tweet. I thought we were mostly over bad launches but it seems like every time a new console generation launches, we’re gonna get bad launches. Never buy a new PC game on launch, don’t pre order games and wait for price drops. Be responsible consumers and reward good behavior from publishers.

When I switched to Steam and PC Gaming from Xbox 360 one of the biggest differences I noticed was that there were a lot more games to offer, and at lower prices. Because of this I dont feel that games like Assassin's Creed and Watchdogs are "big" games anymore, I just view them as shitty broken games some dumbass developer is releasing early. And thanks to all the reviews Steam allows, when a game is broken, everyone knows. The issue is consoles have a lot less of a selection, and if you want a game you're going to spend hours on you're going to buy one of the newer AAA games that keep coming out broken. Thats why these companies are pushing out more broken games and why they are starting to ignore PC a bit more, because we aren't buying their shitty games.

I'm kinda glad I managed to avoid all these massively buggy games in 2014 all while not visiting the largest gaming news sites. It's a real shame that games are allowed to release broken partly because patches are a thing now. I wonder if anyone at any of these companies has made the argument that your company would look a heck of a lot more competent if you released a game that didn't need a day 1 patch, especially now.

people demand new game titles every year and then they play it and then they complain bout there is a bunch of glitches well there would be fewer glitches if you gave the game devs some time to develop the game instead of demanding for a new call of duty every year people need to stop acting like a spoiled brat. "oh but people want a new game every year to buy for their children" well walk up to your child and say no game devs shouldn't have to pump out a game every year of the same title every year I am tired of seeing a new call of duty because when I am playing I see people taking advantage over the glitches call of duty infinite warfare people getting outside of the map to get nukes, o in the capture the flag doing the flag glitch to get infinite Lvl and be master prestige in 2 days. give the game devs more time to design the game.

And how many Nintendo games were a glitchy mess? Oh that's right, none, I guess that's why the WiiU it's the least selling console, because the games on the system are not gitchy messes, let's see if SEGA can help Nintendo with more games like Sonic Boom

The argument that optimization is hard because console architecture is different is wrong, because the hardware on systems runs on the same architecture across all platforms. If anything, optimization should be getting easier, but it's not because of lazy business practices.

This video and the numerous videos about botched indie PC games on Steam all validate why 2014 was the Year I Was Afraid to Buy Games.

And then there were Anthem and Fallout 76; games so glitchy they could brick your console or delete the game itself from your hard drive.

The sad thing is, that at the end of the day, this is the blame of the consumer. Developers only go as far as the consumer allows them. The only thing we can really do, is hope that people have learned something in 2014.

IGN did something smart with their review of Splatoon. They made their usual review, but they kept the score pending until they could test the game in true online conditions after release.

All this is why I am ever so grateful that Nintendo are still around. Their games are always well polsihed. Just look at Bayonetta 2... the definition of a polished game

This is so depressing. Not only do we get the same shit, it's also broken.

we can blame EA and Ubisoft all we want... but the Mainstream Costumer Base is the one to blame for being easily manipulated.

You failed to mention that the "always on DRM" nightmare for the Xbox is a reality; nowadays you better have a legit copy of the game because of all thses glitches and bugs...they couldn't have planned it better Honestly George...let the "gotta have it" retards work as our Testers; anybody who buys an EA or Ubisoft game on release has got it coming for preordering or rushing to buy such drivel. For the last decade I only have bought on release the Dark Souls 2, Oblivion and the defunct NCAA games, and even games that I really look forward to, like Wasteland 2, I rather wait at least the first 30 days to get so the biggest bugs are taken care off....its is the publishers fault but the consumers share a lot of the blame for all the preordering.

I can't say I've ever expected a yearly release of a game series in fact I expect the opposite. It's the greedy shareholders that are pushing for yearly releases.

I worked for EA as s QA, and honestly I quitted because I got tired of hearing things like, we don't have time to fix this, or this bug is a KS, it made me really angry to go to work, to find bugs, to be told later that those would not be fixed or something along those lines. But is not just games, everything is glitchy now (i'm an electrician) and even electrical supplies are so goddam fragile, they are not as sturdier as they were 50 years ago, cuz I've seen them and those still work like the first day

I didn't even realize this happend. You know why? One word PC

I don't mind not having a CoD or AC game every year, I mean christ if you devs need more time then fucking take it

People keep calling watchdogs "new ip" it's based in the land of assassins creed (no really one of the last side missions points to that) and it continues the series ubisoft the game with the towers and the running around doing parkour thing and the stigma against killing the most annoying characters (the civilians) though atleast in that the game doesn't outright kill you because you killed x number of civilians because they ran into the explosives you laid out so yeah I'd say it's hella old ip.

i'm the man who arranges the bugs which continue to fall from up above

Eitht years later, things have gotten even more worse Another videogame crash can't come soon enough, meh

This is the main reason why I want to be a game developer! To make the best and affordable games people want.

This is a minority issue but an issue nonetheless. Developers also stopped cooperating with with companies like Nvidia, when it comes to developing functional Multi-GPU (SLI) profiles. Pretty much every single AAA title within the last 4-6 months had Multi-GPU issues on launch. Unity was a mess with no profile, Advanced Warfare had microstuttering, DA: I's profile still isn't fixed, The Crew had some issues, Far Cry 4 had crushed blacks and stuttering ... List just keeps going. Normally publishers / developers work together with AMD and Nvidia to create this sort of optimization, however now they don't even have resources or time for that.

Great video! Not be smug or anything, but I feel better now being a Nintendo and retro fan as I am...