The past several years have been kind of rough when it comes to major AAA releases. For everystandout success like Elden Ring,there have been two absolute disasters like Anthem or Halo Infinite. The specific issues plaguing such titles are unique to each, but one common thread among them may very well be that they were all released too early. As most gamers well know, delays are common in gaming; so common in fact that it’s rare for a major release to hit the market without going through at least one.
Yet, many games like Cyberpunk 2077 still weren’t delayed enough to get them ready for market. The reason: they were announced too early. Once a game is announced, so many things are set in motion that it becomes increasingly difficult to put off release. So, rather than trying to do expensive, eleventh-hour delays, it would be better to just wait on the initial announcement.
Let’s start with what is perhaps the most notorious release of the past couple of years: Cyberpunk 2077. As most are probably aware,this game’s release was an absolute disasterfor a number of reasons. The biggest was its utterly broken state at launch, but there’s also the near-decade’s worth of fan anticipation and the false expectations set by theE3 2018 gameplay reveal.Those who went to pick up the game on launch were expecting a generation-defining game, but what they got was a buggy mess that, even without said bugs, would still have wound up being nothing like the game shown in the years leading up to release.
Cyberpunk 2077needed more time in development to be sure, but a lot of this trouble could have been avoided if CD Projekt Red had held-off on announcing the game (or at least showing it) until it had a working build and more or less knew what the final gameplay experience was actually going to be like. That way, fan expectations could have been properly managed, and customers wouldn’t have wound up so disappointed when they bought the game. Who knows, maybe the project would have turned out entirely different had it been initially revealed in 2020 instead of 2012.
The same can be said of EA and BioWare’s now-forgotten Anthem.Anthemwas initially announced in June 2017, and the gameplay reveal trailer promised fans an unrivaled level of freedom and exploration in addition to an intriguing world filled with exciting loot. From the look of it, Anthem was going to be everything that Destiny fans had hoped that game would be. Who wouldn’t be excited for that? Well, the rank-and-file developers working on the game for one.
According toinformation that came out after Anthem’s disastrous 2019 launch,it was unclear exaclty what kind of game Anthem was before theE3 2017 gameplay demowas shown to the public, and now the team had to figure out how to deliver that game. Fan expectations had been set and the team ultimately had too little time to build something that could live up to them. Anthem’s development had many major issues, but this didn’t help matters.
How about a quick look at Halo Infinite? Unlike Anthem and Cyberpunk 2077,Halo Infinite launched with a relatively sound foundation.The moment-to-moment gameplay, arguably the most important part of an FPS, is actually fun. 343i should be proud of getting that part of the game right. Halo Infinite, however, was feature and content-poor at launch. There were few playlists, few maps, few weapons and many series staples were not (and still are not) in the game. Big Team Battle turned out to be critically flawed and was basically unplayable for over a month, and the challenge-based progression and core-based cosmetic systems were (rightfully) largely panned by players.
Considering 343’s and Microsoft’s business strategy forHalo Infinite, the latter two problems probably wouldn’t have been fixed by additional time, but the bugginess and utter lack of series staple features could have. Halo Infinite was initially announced in at E3 2018, and that kicked-off the marketing cycle which fed fan expectations and created a greater need for the game to ship sooner rather than later. Who knows, had that process been started later, after the developers had finished the foundation, Halo Infinite’s story could have turned differently.
There are of course business reasons for announcing games so early. Publishers and developers need their customers to be excited for what’s coming next, and no game can stay in development forever. Indeed, these projects are often already in development for years before the initial announcement and must ship at some point if the developers are going to stay in business. Still, surely it would be better to wait until one’s game has taken proper shape before allowing the hype train to leave the station and tying oneself to potentially disastrous deadlines.
