How do they get away with releasing games like Skyrim on consoles?

[rob_simple]

I played Fallout 3 for over a hundred hours and nothing like that ever happened to me. What are you talking about? Did you ever think maybe there's something wrong with the game disk, or your console?

As I have said (seriously do people actually read other posts?) I have had the exact same problems with three different Bethesda games (Fallout 3, Fallout: NV & Skyrim) on two different PS3's and if you take two seconds to Google it you'll find that these games are infamous for crashing.

PS3 version works fine.

Well clearly it doesn't.

 

[Bomberman4000]

To be fair, your Gameboy has a LOT less moving parts and intricate workings to go wrong internally than the PS3 or 360. I'm not condoning the systems breaking down or anything. I had a 360 in 2006, it broke down (not the RRoD, there was something wrong with the way the system was communicating with the AV cables) so I replaced it with an arcade version in 2009, kept my hard drive and had store credits so it only set me back about $140. I got a PS3 later that same year. My 360 broke down again in 2011 and I finally just let it go and sold it and all my games for it. My PS3 is still working fine. I play several large scale RPG's on it including Skyrim, and have never had any problems with it so I don't really know what to tell you friendo.

Is it possible that it's the gaming market itself is to blame for products having to be released before they're ready, or developers pushing things out as quickly as possible? Let's think about it, would a developer rather get bad PR from constantly delaying a game or get bad PR for having to release patches? Patches are forgivable because they give the impression that the company is trying to meet set deadlines for customers and they're still trying to improve the product even after release. Delays anger fans because it makes them feel like the rug has been pulled out from under their feet.

This is simply an analysis, not necessarily my opinions. I'd personally rather wait for the game/console to work like it's supposed to before I get my hands on it, but unfortunately that doesn't appear to be the case for most of the gaming community.

As far as your particular situation with Skyrim and your PS3, I don't know what to tell you man. It could be a faulty disc, it could be your system, it could just be bad luck with your purchases. There's no real way to know for sure. If it's the disc then maybe try to return it and exchange it for another one or something, I don't know. Sucks you're having such problems with it.


EDIT: Maybe stop buying Bethesda games if it bothers you this much? I think at this point you should know (and probably should've formulated this opinion before Skyrim) that it might not be a coincidence for your experiences with Bethesda games to be bad. Maybe just avoid the developer altogether if it's going to be a problem for you.

 

[rob_simple]

Is it possible that it's the gaming market itself is to blame for products having to be released before they're ready, or developers pushing things out as quickly as possible? Let's think about it, would a developer rather get bad PR from constantly delaying a game or get bad PR for having to release patches? Patches are forgivable because they give the impression that the company is trying to meet set deadlines for customers and they're still trying to improve the product even after release. Delays anger fans because it makes them feel like the rug has been pulled out from under their feet.

EDIT: Maybe stop buying Bethesda games if it bothers you this much? I think at this point you should know (and probably should've formulated this opinion before Skyrim) that it might not be a coincidence for your experiences with Bethesda games to be bad. Maybe just avoid the developer altogether if it's going to be a problem for you.

I think you're completely right, I'm just of what I guess is a small portion of gamers who would rather wait as long as it takes to see the game released in stable condition than have it early and just pray it holds together.

I think this will be my last Bethesda game, yeah. To be honest I don't even enjoy them that much; I think the writing is poor at best and the combat engine is hilarious. There's just something so god damn addictive about them, though.

And if anyone was wondering why I'm posting so frequently in this thread it's because -oh snap- Skyrim just glitched again.

 

[ablac]

Clearly there is something wrong with your machine because I have never had a problem anywhere near to what you are describing nor have my friends (some of whom have clocked in 300+ hours on Bethesda games) or a large amount of other people responding in the thread. If you have such a problem with consoles then why not just get a PC because that seems to be your solution. Either you are consistently mistreating your console/games resulting in issues or you are exaggerating the problems as uniform problems like this are down to the user not the machine. My first 360 RRoDed but that was after about 4 years of consistent use and my new one has lasted since then (about 2 years) so while reliability is an issue it isnt as bad as you make them to be. The thing with cosoles is that the hardware is exactly the same across the board. Therefore if these problems are normal then everyone should get them while when they arent, like I said, they are down to the user.

 

[AnarchistFish]

I own a 360 and I've barely had any glitches with Bethesda games (and I own F:NV). They might have frozen once or twice but I can't remember.

 

[isometry]

On the NES it was impossible to play any game for more than ~2 contiguous hours, because the system would overheat. Usually it would take the form of moving to the next screen and everything would be garbled, or sometimes the next stage would just fail to load.

Mario, Zelda, Mega man, etc all of these great games on the NES had an inevitable crashing problem.

 

[rob_simple]

Clearly there is something wrong with your machine because I have never had a problem anywhere near to what you are describing nor have my friends (some of whom have clocked in 300+ hours on Bethesda games) or a large amount of other people responding in the thread. If you have such a problem with consoles then why not just get a PC because that seems to be your solution. Either you are consistently mistreating your console/games resulting in issues or you are exaggerating the problems as uniform problems like this are down to the user not the machine. My first 360 RRoDed but that was after about 4 years of consistent use and my new one has lasted since then (about 2 years) so while reliability is an issue it isnt as bad as you make them to be. The thing with cosoles is that the hardware is exactly the same across the board. Therefore if these problems are normal then everyone should get them while when they arent, like I said, they are down to the user.

So...did you just skim over that whole period where 360's were being sent back to Microsoft in droves or what? Were ALL of them mis-treating their consoles? I love how when something bad happens that it absolutely has to be user error; that the people who don't experience problems are never the exception to the rule.

The reason a huge portion of the 360's broke was because one of the chips (very technical, I know) wasn't properly soldered to the motherboard; when the system started to heat it would come loose and cause the RRoD.

Of course, there was every chance it would just keep on working too, it's sort of like when your headphones break, if you pull the cable in a certain direction so the wiring still makes the connection then they will continue to work; which incidentally is the reason that the towel trick works (and it does work, I used it to pawn my broken 360).

Make no mistake: all of the 360's had this problem; the only thing that kept some going and put others in the shit was pure blind luck.

 

[Agow95]

I've never had a problem like this, it must be your console or disc, which is saying something if you consider that I have one of the original 360's, only 20GB, and having suffered 2 RRODs.
edit: and those RRODs only happened about 4 years after purchase, and the second one was a week after the first, so I assume the repair wasn't perfect, still in perfect working order right now.

 

[Darren716]

On my 360 I have never had a problem (besides a few glitches in New Vegas) with any of Bethesda's RPGs so it could just be your console

 

[Hyper-space]

snip

Things were not better back in the day, there is a shit-ton of games that have been released despite being literally unplayable. Being able to patch the game later on is an absolute godsend in terms of playability, having to buy the ENTIRE game again just to be able to play it was shit.

 

[ImperialSunlight]

They sell it on consoles because it reaches a much greater audience that way. Most people don't have computers that can support games like Skyrim.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Skyrim would require a pretty high-end (expensive) computer to play. If the released exclusively for PC, they'd be cutting themselves off from a very sizeable player group.

Considering consoles these days are nothing but extremely low end gaming computers...no. Just no.

I could put together a system to run Skyrim on above console level graphics for less than $400.

 

[Dogstile]

I've got Bethesda games for PC and Xbox 360, I think the question should be "How do they get away with releasing these games at all?". I don't know exactly how they manage to make it so it's hit and miss on practically identical hardware, it sure is a feat. I'm going to assume you're connected to the internet so it can patch itself, and move onto the turn it off and on section. I had a similar problem with New Vegas, and resetting the console every 2 hours or so kept it playable.

Yeah it's all patched and good to go, I know what you mean about New Vegas, I was resetting it ever couple of hours until it finally crashed my PS3 to the point it would no longer work. It's a workaround, but I think the fact we're saying 'oh yeah the game works fine if you just reboot it ever two to three hours' is a terrible indictment of how gaming is now.

I used to play Kingdom Hearts (ain't even sorry) for hours and hours at a time without even a hint of lag.

You know what? Since this game is published by Bethesda, everyone is ready to forgive major glitches like this.

If this game was released by Electronic Arts, everyone would have put the torch and pitchfork's salesmen's kids through college by now.

Skyrim should not have released with these bugs. Period. The fact that it and every Bethesda game before it has done this is a testament to how poor their development practice is.

My problem is that everyone keeps saying they shouldn't release Skyrim with the bugs they had, but not only were people getting really impatient with them for not releasing them, they spent what, £160,000 patching it (Microsoft charges for patching, they patched four times so far http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/02/16/microsofts-40000-per-xbox-patch-explains-why-updates-are-slow-to-roll-out/) and took the hit by rolling it out the door.

Other than that, most of the bugs aren't even serious and require what, you reloading that autosave that happened when you walked in the room? That's roughly five or ten minutes of gametime lost, if that. Was it before the autosave? Luckily they keep three for you then. Hell, I had the same sort of glitches in games on the original Xbox, the PS1, the PS2 and the gamecube. I don't understand why skyrim gets such a bad rap, as its the only game I can think of in recent memory that admits that freezing does happen and tries to minimize it.

Bundle in that everyone assuming the game should be perfect no matter what probably hasn't ever tried even basic level programming and that they all assumed games were better before patches came out (hint, they weren't. True Crime: Streets of LA, GTA, Driver, anyone wanna jump in here with more?)

Its always been like this. Skyrim is just bigger.

 

[spartan231490]

never had a problem on my 360. you must be doing it wrong.

Nor have I. The only problem I've had with skyrim is that my schedule is so packed I only get to play it on school breaks.

 

[Angry_squirrel]

Xbox 360 player here. Never had a problem with any of Bethesda's games, besides some minor bugs in New Vegas. I don't know what all the fuss is about

 

[Rheinmetall]

How do Bethesda get away with repeatedly releasing these games on consoles when the hardware is barely capable of supporting them?

Because people keep buying Bethesda games whatsoever. Simple. Well look at it from Bethesdsa point of view. Since people don't really care if they buy a faulty product, and they keep buying faulty products from the same source, what is the reason for Bethesda to fix the problem?

 

[Wintermoot]

did you pirate it or something?
mostly game dev,s know what a console is capable of.
it could also be Bethesda being Bethesda

 

[Soviet Steve]

I'm so glad I don't rely on toys for my gaming experience.