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Topic of the Week: Are delays for the best?

Topic of the Week: Are delays for the best?

So a little game called Street Fighter V came out recently, and it’s got quite a few people annoyed. Despite scoring very highly among professional critics, many areas of the game are, quite simply, broken. Here on PC, we’re seeing issues with matchmaking, arcade stick support, and even basic things like screen resolutions. It’s all very frustrating.

Perhaps some of the titles in our list of upcoming PC games could do with a delay?

After chatting with Ben, we both agreed that Street Fighter V could have done with a hefty delay. If it took them six months – a year even – the condition it launched it would have been significantly better, and the public outcry wouldn’t be there to tarnish the game’s otherwise solid reputation.

But are delays the way to go? Is spending six months in an isolated environment the best way to find bugs and squash them, when you could have untold thousands of players finding them for you? If you make sure you’re well-connected to the community and issue patches swifty, is getting the game out there in the wild actually the best thing for it? Afterall, a full retail release is going to draw more people than your specialised beta test…

Then of course there’s impatient players who just need to get their hands on the game as soon as possible. They’re an important demographic too, right?

So what do you think? Are teething bugs just something we have to deal with in this modern age of ambitious game development, or should games be permanently held back in the dark until the day they’re guaranteed to work flawlessly? Fire your opinions at us in the comments.