The Daily Grind: Should companies announce release dates?

The marketing department demands it... but I think release dates should only be announced after enough rounds of beta that the game is ready to go, and public/open betas should be used as marketing tools... by the time you public/open beta, your game should be ready for launch.

Release dates give people a chance to know what's coming. Sure, we see more and more cases of release dates changing. But this has been the case long before MMOs were the cool thing. I see nothing wrong with a company having a projected release date. I see less wrong with a company changing it for reasons of production quality and bug fixes. In fact, I'd much rather see a company change their release date than to put out a bad game.

Besides, what else would all the gaming pundits talk about?

I'd much prefer to see a 'not before' date :) That at least gives me a clue about when to start getting interested :)

One one hand release dates are nice to have on the other side I prefer to have an estimated year of arrival, then as it gets closer to release an estimated quarter and see the release date only when the product is finally finishing/ finished.

Should companies announce release dates?

If they're going to play the titillation game, absolutely yes.

They can't do the endless "Here's a sceenshot, isn't our game fantastic?!?" thing and the endless "We'll release it when it's ready!" thing, the two are mutually exclusive. If that's a real gameplay screenshot/movie/whatever and the game is, as endless dev interviews promise, coming along great and nearly ready, you'd best give a release date or the words "vaporware" and "Duke Nukem' Forever" are going to start being spoken.

Game companies make this bed with their hype machine, then blame customers when customers start wondering when all the hype is going to result in something that's actually playable.

The problem is that the hype machine starts way too early. When a game company/dev starts hyping a game to sites like this it's likely nothing but vaporware and a couple of mock-up screen shots. From there on out the hype machine tries to make everyone believe the game is further along then it is because if people really knew that it's nothing more then a few renders, a skeletal flowchart, and the devs sitting around reading the manual for the engine they bought, no one would be interested.

When the game finally gets fleshed out enough to barely playable it enters beta as fast as possible because that's big news. Unfortunately that beta is really barely an alpha and the chances are it's going to crash and burn so hard it'll be sad. The only thing stopping the game from dying the big death at that point is the NDAs keeping the "Beta" testers from telling it like it is.

If it survives that, a big if, it goes back to be reworked from the ground up and when it re-enters beta it's maybe actually vaguely resembles a product in late alpha or even -- shocking, but possible -- early beta.

At that point the devs better pray the game has at least the framework needed to be decent, if it isn't at that point, because it's getting shipped soon.

Of course the hype machine has spent the intervening time telling everyone about how the rework was only a minor matter to make the game even more awesome then it was, only a minor burp on the way to shipping it as soon as we can shovel whatever comes out of the second "beta" out the door.

We're all -- sites like this one, customers like me -- part of the hype machine, of course. We lap this stuff up, try and run it through our BS filters, and try -- and often fail -- not to get too excited about games we know from long experience are more marketing hype then anything that is, or likely ever will be, playable.

But, much as game companies would like to say otherwise, it's not our shoulders upon which the fault for the mess that generally is the release day dance rests. They started marketing a product before likely a line of code had been written or a server purchased. They hyped features and gameplay that weren't in the game and likely never would be. They promised gaming nirvana when they should have kept their mouth's shut until they at least had something worthy of late alpha/early beta.

You can't hype forever, at some point you have to put up or shut up, and that's what the release date dance is all about.

Game companies like to blame unrealistic customer expectations for the damage missed released dates cause. The reality is if they were more realistic with what they told customers this would be far less of an issue.

Personally I don't think a title should be announced until it hits the stage where open beta is a month away.

The problem with ChampO is that Cryptic named their release date last year, at the same time they announced the title. It really only leads to trouble when what looked achievable 18 months ago suddenly isn't.

In the case of MMORPG's


No

I like the method of quarterly announcements such as

"Available Q3 2009"

I like the way Blizzard does it -- when it's done. That way, we don't get games that just aren't ready yet and die prematurely, like Hellgate London.

They should always announce release dates, but only when they can be confident of sticking to them. If they must announce a release date ahead of confidence, they ought to pad it so that they can either stick to it or announce a *sooner* release date.

MMOs should never give a release date unless the game is gold and off to manufacturer. The first month of a new MMO is critical to its long-term success and poor word of mouth will ruin it.

Perfect example is Hellgate London which had a highly advertised Halloween release date. Beta testers begged them to push back the date but they said due to marketing (and an empty bank account) they could and would not.

Look at the launches of Warhammer Online and Age of Conan, where they suffered from mediocre launches (missing features, bugs that lasted through beta), and how both games combined have less than 500k subscribers despite having huge budgets. Both of those games should have been around 1 million subscribers each, but releasing before games were ready hurt them big time.

Announce release dates by quarter until confident about date. Then, about two weeks prior to ACTUAL CONFIRMED release, give the exact date.

There needs to be a reasonable advance notice about the actual release because people like me have been known to take a vacation day from work to be there on release day.

I think it is sometimes a good idea to announce a rough estimate to when the game can be expected but never a certain day. like "end of 2009" type stuff, that way it gives the company some room to maneuver.

The farther out you are from release, the more vague you need to be. CO probably shouldn't have announced theirs until they were in open beta, had a stress-test, etc. Cryptic did the right thing, I think, as the market is less and less tolerant of "boxed betas" back when this genre still young. Now? Pick a style of game and there's going to be at least one major title, with competition on the way. CO has to deal with COH (established title) and its upcoming expansion plus the incoming DCUO. They have to launch as close to perfectly as possible because players have alternatives!

If you look at the gaming industry in general, release dates are made and broken a lot, or the product is rushed to meet it. They're hopefully idealistic at best, normally a bit fictitious, detrimental at worst.

If companies didn't announce a release date to the public, someone within the company would leak it. This could turn into a public relations disaster.

You can't successfully market a game if you are having uncontrolled leaks about the game. It has a way of causing all kinds of unwanted speculation and ultimately doubt about the game itself.

There's a great deal of thought that goes into informing the public of the game's release date. Some times a game can be all ready to go but is waiting for the prime date to be released. You don't want to a release date that is too close to your competitors newly released game. You don't want it to conflict with other media entertainment, like movies, TV shows, or music. A release date can change for the smallest thing. Could be something as small as internal restructuring of the company personnel in preparation to the release of the game.

So just because a release date has been changed, doesn't automatically mean the game is incomplete.

I think release date announcements are essentially there to try and convince potential customers to hang on until then and not get too absorbed in any competing games. It also adds to the hype factor to know a game is coming soon and there's information on it being released. The longer a company can keep their hype going, the more people will try the game at launch.

Personally, I prefer Blizzard's vague "It'll be released when it's done" scheduling. They have a reputation for releasing outstanding games so the release dates don't really matter to me.

Never. It's reality.

Marketing-wise you should have an announcement date of some sort. I suggest the quarter system so that gives you a moderate amount of wiggle room.

If you hit a major snag, one that will take up more than your two months of wiggle room, then you push it back and announce a release date. Changing to another quarter with a solid date is a lot more palatable than just changing dates.

But to answer the question, no they should not have release "dates."