I asked myself why I am not playing the new Star Wars game? I really wanted to just a week ago. Well, judging by the title, the answer is obvious, and if you've heard the news, you know what is cooking here. The game was released in a dreadful state.
And this is a long list of other games that have come out with technical issues, not just on PC, but on the entire platform catalog. How did you manage to mess this one up? Is it even ironic now that Jedi Survivor was made using UE4?
Price of computer parts have gone up, the crypto mining trend is dead and yet GPUs still cost somewhat an arm and leg. How are we supposed to buy these things without dealing with the basic necessity problem? Now we have games that doesn't run well even when we have superseded the required spec.
Is there a worker's strike, do people not want to work on technical and bug testing? QA is an unappreciated work that most people that work on the low-end are not getting paid well enough? I am aware of how stingy companies are when it comes to paying people.
The easy answer? Look at how many people bought the PS5, despite it not having that many exclusives in the past few years. Look at how much game sales have gotten up, as an effect of COVID-19. Maybe we've given them too much to no longer consider how important maintaining quality is.
I hate to say this, but we did this. We really did this, our passion for good games has led to developers decide it's ok to tolerate the inconsistencies once in a while. But, now it's close to being a routine bad release.
If I played Jedi Survivor now, it would probably my 6th buggy released game played this year. And I expected better from Respawn, considering the first time they made a mess like this, and now it's far worse than the first game.
Enough's Enough
I really think it's high time we boycott buying games. For real this time. I know that's a tough ask, but look at the current climate now. Market inflation is pushing people toward's money-saving. And we are now being forced to fork up 70 USD for video games now.
These issues also applies to consoles, the last few Nintendo exclusives have had some bumpy performance problems due to taxing rendering process that are too much for its system spec to handle at times. The Steam Deck is out, and emulation is growing, yet Nintendo can't accept that and uses their laywers and lobbyist to shut em down.
With a gigantic market cap like this, why is it so hard to have extra hand for taking care of its technical areas? To make sure the games are running well at least 90% of the time?
And don't get me started on Nvidia, AMD, Intel, and Epic Games. Both the GPU hardware vendors needed to put more effort into communicating with the developers, just so these games do well in release.
PC games are difficult to optimize due to the hardware options that they need to function with and with the competition going on between CPU makers by releasing stuff like AMD's 3D Stacked Cache CPUs, it's going to get even harder. Why am I including Epic into this? Their game engine having issues is also been trending as of late.
Of course, Epic aren't the only ones. How is it that Sony decided buying Nixxes would have put more use elsewhere rather than the PC port of Last of Us Part I? The remake to the best-selling video games of theirs? Rather than some guys named Iron Galaxy?
It makes me sick for the kind of excuses they're coming up inside their inner circle just to push these broken products out and let us deal with it in time.
Then there's the GTA Trilogy Edition, eFootball 2022, Callisto Protocol, need I go on? Haven't we learned anything from Cyberpunk 2077? Maybe buying that game pretty much set the trend itself. I didn't forget Wild Hearts and Wo Long either, no one should spare the Japanese as well.
Tougher Fight Ahead
Is inflation going to stop this year? Who's to say, and who can tell now? There are various conditions that involve in the market recovering. Till then, we're all in for a rough ride. Especially the people whose wallets drain before half the month is over. (me, basically nowadays)
Maybe evaluating their finances and putting more focus on a good release is what's needed now. I mean, should we forget what Miyamoto has told us? Majority of games coming out are single-player games anyway. It dampens on the passion developers even put to their games.
A few short months later will be the 3rd year anniversary of the PS5's launch, what do we have to say about its price now? Heck, it's still 500 USD in preorder, but in other countries, that price has gone up already. A system that doesn't have many system seller games, and yet people are buying this in droves.
And just recently, Canada's new regulation is challenging the YouTuber's presence in the country, which might impact how their voice is expressed about certain things.
Sony has shown that they still have power in the lobbies of many other countries, just look at how far they were willing to go to stop Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
So what does the last bit have to do with PC gaming in general? Nothing much, I think, because there's nothing much wrong with the PC platform. Modders are doing better jobs at patching games than the actual devs themselves at times. It just goes to show, how if companies stay lax, we'll be stuck dealing with this.
And if you think things are still fine because there are games that got fixed right away. Just because Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 are working now, the fact that they still released with issues shouldn't be considered saving graces, they're warning signs of what to come.
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