I'm going to have to repeat some things I've said in various posts:
1. I understand the frustration.. you paid and want to play.. however:
2. Over 100 people do nothing all day but test the game at Microsoft (once submitted) and at Take Two/VC (during development)- I know some of them. They do so in 24 hour shifts during crunch time before a game is released.
If you know anything about how the console game industry works, you know that it is almost impossible to get a game past Microsoft and Sony's compliance and approval process if there are crashes that are easy to reproduce or happen a lot. This problem did NOT occur in testing.
Yes higher ups at companies push for some bugs to be overlooked because if you waited for all bugs to be fixed, a game would never come out. They are slightly more lenient on yearly-released sports games because fans have shown they would rather play a game that is updated and improved in other ways than one that is totally bug-free.
However, you must take my word for it, Microsoft and Sony will NOT greenlight a console release on which it is easy to reproduce a crash in testing. They constantly reject first, second, and third submissions of great games that have even ONE easily reproducible crash, sometimes even in an obscure setting.
4. Testers do not use retail 360s to test the game because this is not possible. A retail 360 can not play the burns of the constantly updated builds.
5. The 360s testers use are not identical to the retail 360s you all have.
6. There are different hard drives and optical drives in various batches of retail 360s.
7. MLB uses the hard drive more than any other 360 game released so far to my knowledge. It uses them for replays, highlights, all sorts of things. This is my impression, not a guaranteed fact, but I guarantee the so-far-on-360 unprecedented hard drive usage is related to the problem.
8. The fact that some people have no problems even with a hard drive, online, offline, vip or not, is proof positive of one of two things: a) a problem between 'going gold' and the manufactured disks (manufacturing plant QC, master disc preparation, etc), or b) a 360 problem between different lots of manufactured units, that so far no other game has uncovered because of less or different hard drive usage than MLB.
The issue is crystal clear in this sense. If two people who have 360s, and two identical discs of the game (this is assuming the problem was not QC at the plant), both format their drives, both through an HDTV with default dashboard settings and one freezes and the other doesn't (this basic situation has played out hundreds of times in these threads) then it is a hardware issue. The fact that it hasnt happened with the limited number of other games from other companies on the 360 so far means nothing.
9. You can be sure 2K is freaking out about this and there is lots of finger-pointing going on behind the scenes, but you can also be sure there are people losing a lot of sleep and working a lot of long hours trying to narrow down what systems and what combination of factors lead to this issue with the manufactured discs. There is nothing worse for a game than early word of mouth saying 'dont buy it, it doesn't work - anything that affects the bottom line like this, to say that it is intentional, is foolhardy. All they can do now is hope they can come up with a fix within a few weeks and spread the word far and wide that anyone who purchased the game is eligible for the fix.
I just wanted to lay out a few things that I know are not widely understood. Please don't flame this, I've read every post on the board up until now and there is no need to repost things already said. If you've spoken your mind at all, I've read it.
Its totally understandable if you want to return or exchange the game. It's totally reasonable to be pissed, but nobody is served by lots of threads full of incorrect information.
thanks..
1. I understand the frustration.. you paid and want to play.. however:
2. Over 100 people do nothing all day but test the game at Microsoft (once submitted) and at Take Two/VC (during development)- I know some of them. They do so in 24 hour shifts during crunch time before a game is released.
If you know anything about how the console game industry works, you know that it is almost impossible to get a game past Microsoft and Sony's compliance and approval process if there are crashes that are easy to reproduce or happen a lot. This problem did NOT occur in testing.
Yes higher ups at companies push for some bugs to be overlooked because if you waited for all bugs to be fixed, a game would never come out. They are slightly more lenient on yearly-released sports games because fans have shown they would rather play a game that is updated and improved in other ways than one that is totally bug-free.
However, you must take my word for it, Microsoft and Sony will NOT greenlight a console release on which it is easy to reproduce a crash in testing. They constantly reject first, second, and third submissions of great games that have even ONE easily reproducible crash, sometimes even in an obscure setting.
4. Testers do not use retail 360s to test the game because this is not possible. A retail 360 can not play the burns of the constantly updated builds.
5. The 360s testers use are not identical to the retail 360s you all have.
6. There are different hard drives and optical drives in various batches of retail 360s.
7. MLB uses the hard drive more than any other 360 game released so far to my knowledge. It uses them for replays, highlights, all sorts of things. This is my impression, not a guaranteed fact, but I guarantee the so-far-on-360 unprecedented hard drive usage is related to the problem.
8. The fact that some people have no problems even with a hard drive, online, offline, vip or not, is proof positive of one of two things: a) a problem between 'going gold' and the manufactured disks (manufacturing plant QC, master disc preparation, etc), or b) a 360 problem between different lots of manufactured units, that so far no other game has uncovered because of less or different hard drive usage than MLB.
The issue is crystal clear in this sense. If two people who have 360s, and two identical discs of the game (this is assuming the problem was not QC at the plant), both format their drives, both through an HDTV with default dashboard settings and one freezes and the other doesn't (this basic situation has played out hundreds of times in these threads) then it is a hardware issue. The fact that it hasnt happened with the limited number of other games from other companies on the 360 so far means nothing.
9. You can be sure 2K is freaking out about this and there is lots of finger-pointing going on behind the scenes, but you can also be sure there are people losing a lot of sleep and working a lot of long hours trying to narrow down what systems and what combination of factors lead to this issue with the manufactured discs. There is nothing worse for a game than early word of mouth saying 'dont buy it, it doesn't work - anything that affects the bottom line like this, to say that it is intentional, is foolhardy. All they can do now is hope they can come up with a fix within a few weeks and spread the word far and wide that anyone who purchased the game is eligible for the fix.
I just wanted to lay out a few things that I know are not widely understood. Please don't flame this, I've read every post on the board up until now and there is no need to repost things already said. If you've spoken your mind at all, I've read it.
Its totally understandable if you want to return or exchange the game. It's totally reasonable to be pissed, but nobody is served by lots of threads full of incorrect information.
thanks..
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