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by socalgal2 18 days ago
GTA6 in isolation is not the issue. Coordination with the entire rest of the ecosystem is. Ads are bought and paid for 6 month before launch for certain time slots. Store shelf space is reserved. Miss the deadlines and those downstream companies suffer. Their promotion time slots / space, is unbooked and it's too late to fill it with something appropriate. So, the company makes the promise "we'll have ready by November". They make this promise in April. Don't deliver and they don't do business with you next time. Maybe GTV6 is an exception here, that doesn't change the general point.

You could try to argue that companies shouldn't even start that process until the project is finished. Step 1: finish project, Step 2: book ads/shelf space, Step 3: 6 months later, ship it. But sitting on a finished project for 6 months is like not investing your money for 6 months. A lot of money is lost. Money can comes out of salaries
3 comments
kelnos 18 days ago
The downstream stakeholders (ad networks, retailers, etc.) need to be more flexible and tolerant of these events. If they had to deal with them regularly, they already would be. There's no law of nature that says things have to work exactly this way.

Meanwhile we have software devs and artists and product people damaging their mental health and suffering burnout for this. It's a video game. It's not worth it.

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kbenson 18 days ago
> So, the company makes the promise "we'll have ready by November". They make this promise in April.

Make smaller promises but make them more often, and shit changes more often. Be clear about features 3-6 releases out, and when and why features get bumped. Companies delivering software are already doing this because they often can't deliver in 6 months and telling the customer it will be in the nest release a year from now does, as you note, make them stop doing business with you, so instead now you can tell them it's just delayed by a few months which they can maybe deal with.

Games don't really work like this, but games also don't seem to really work the same way at all and have different incentives.

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spopejoy 18 days ago
> Store shelf space is reserved

I thought this would be over by now, I certainly haven't bought physical this decade. Who is buying physical, parents of young kids?

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