Ubisoft to doctor Rainbow Six Vegas

Well you cant catch every possible problem with every game. so i think the patching is a good thing, but they shouldn't ship a game knowing that there is a problem with it. if they find out there is a problem after it launches is a different story.

And what about those people without hard drives? Are they forever stuck with a buggy, incomplete game?

I'm sure that bug fixes and a finished product always come before meeting a holiday sales deadline or the release of a movie. This is probably a unique situation. Questioning the corporations would only create awkward situations, and we're all too busy playing our unfinished products to have time for that. So everyone ends up happy. See? And besides, if you can't play a game with all kinds of bugs in it, aren't you just a n00b? Think about that Joystiq, in your ivory tower. For shame.

it's ubisoft, company which has many many bug related issues.

You are NEVER going to catch all the bugs in a game...EVER. This is going to become more and more common practice as the software and hardware becomes more advanced. Games of old(5 years ago or more) that came out with fewer bugs had are less code involved, and therefore less bugs. Now you have publishers pushing for studios to get games out NOW at whatever cost. Be thankful for the ability to patch that didn't exist in the olden days.

As far as those without HDDS or broadband...sux to be you....move out of the sticks and drop the cash for the HDD

They should fix the lame ass, -Kick you out to main menu after a ranked match- "feature" BTW, check out my RB6 facemapped character on my blog http://adidat.blogspot.com

Is it just me, or is Ubisoft turning into EA?

@7

its just you.

To everyone saying you can't catch all the bugs; You are right you can't, but how can you not catch the voice chat bug and 4 or 5 other serious bugs that show up after 10 minutes of playing the game online? Don't make excuses for companies releasing buggy games. They knew about a lot of these before the game shipped. IF they didn't then Ubisoft has the worst testers in the world or didn't even test out half of the features before shipping.

"Who will protect us?" Oh please. Exercise a little responsibility as a consumer and stop supporting games that do this.

Making people aware of these kinds of issues is important, so Joystiq, keep doing your thing, but maybe turn down the melodrama a bit.

Caveat emptor, bitches.

yeah, step up your responsibility and don't buy a game because of a multiplayer voice chat bug. thats what i do, and im a man, a big man.

ill personally buy the game if they release a patch that gets rid of the whole 3rd-person rubbish and dynamic moral decision crap.

The difference is that EA will charge for their bug fixes...

That's Ubisoft for ya ... making sure that they pump'em out every fuckin' year regardless of bugs/issues.

Rainbow Six is a great game, marred by one major multi-player bug. Unless you've actually played it, trashing it because of reading about one well known issue is silly. As much as I enjoy Penny Arcade, they really seemed to sensationalize the bug. If it was a whole laundry list of bugs then I would be upset like many others, but if the main problem is something fixable, then I have plenty of other games to play in the meantime, and still haven't finished the single-player R6 campaign anyways.

I am totally against games being shipped incomplete or buggy, and do wish Microsoft would man-up to their comments before the 360 was released that the Xbox Live service would not be allowed to be used to patch buggy games. I'm sure Ubi didn't want to miss their hard ship date, just like EA does with their games, which is sad.

People without hard drives aren't playing online (generally). They COULD, but they'd be shortchanging themselves in a lot of ways, not just in patches.

The patches are almost always for online problems. It's well known at this point that the online portion of Xbox and 360 games isn't able to be properly stress tested with the procedures that have been used to date. This is why you're going to start seeing big public betas on all of the Microsoft online games (Halo3 and Shadowrun being two obvious recent examples).

I wonder if the same people that whine about shipping buggy games are the same people that whine about games shipping late.

I don't understand why so many people whine about patches. In previous consoles, these same kinds of bugs were there, but they never got patched.

better than just a "Ship now" attitude. id rather have a buggy game for the first month and then get a patch rather that wait an extra 2 or 3 months for the game to come out, tbh.

#17 That's not true; past games received silent "revisions" in different print runs.

I've never had a huge problem with "ship now, fix minor multiplayer issues," since I tend to play a game single-player before diving in online. Still, there's no excuse for something obvious like the voice chat problem.

Software apologists used to excuse buggy computer software by whining "Wah! With all of the possible configurations of motherboards, CPUs, video cards, etc it's no wonder software is so buggy!" This used to be the reason why video game console software was so reliable by comparison. Now, with consoles still having their consistent hardware makeup, their software suddenly becomes as bad as computer software when the ability to patch the software becomes a reality.

The fact is software is buggy because consumers tolerate it. Bugs in the older unpatchable console systems would not be tolerated at all while bugs in patchable consoles is barely tolerated by consumers. That's all that halfassed software companies like Ubisoft need to know. This patch later mentality can also lower development costs because a buggy game that doesn't sell well can just be ignored by the company that made it.


Now we see the same thing happening in the video game console market

Actually, Ubisoft mentions that they already knew there were issues before they shipped the game. They already knew about the voice issues and all that. They were working on a patch before the game came out. Which means that unfortunately, all the bugs that are 'new' to them wont be fixed until a second and even farther away patch.

That pisses me off.

The game was rushed to market, and it is not just these bugs that are problems. There are major screen tearing problems with the graphics engine...I mean like the worst I have ever seen. I don't know if this is an Unreal Engine 3 thing, but the screen splits and shuffles, ugly lines appear on the screen when you move...it is AWFUL!!! It is so distracting when you are trying to take in the beautiful environents. And BTW, the environments, while nice, are no where near the original "screen shots" we saw when the game was announced in EGM. I expected more from Ubi Montreal. I seriously wish they just delayed the game for a year and polished the hell out of it. They skimped on the detail, and just applied more next-gen haze to cover it all up. All that said, the gameplay is excellent, but while gameplay is paramount, having a solid environment to keep you enveloped in the world is just as important.

If I wanted buggy games, I'd play on the PC! The whole "only ship finished products" thing was the reason I'm a console player!

This generation of systems can get bent.

Yeah, you can't expect a perfect game for 60 bucks, especially a 2nd generation title. I mean, they have only had dev kits for how long? The 360 still owns this generation. But, if this happens to a sony game, well, screw that corporate giant, all they do is try to screw us. And Nintendo, if they did this, well they can't get anything right...blah, blah, blah. Fanboy devotion at its finest.

This is really an unfair accessment. As a programmer I can tell you that making 360 games isn't as simple as making a SNES game. Back then they could release games almost bug free. There is a ton of coding going into these games and the possibilty of a bug grows astronomically as the code grows. Programming takes time. If you can't have tolerance for these bugs I hope you can have tolerance for a 5 year development cycle on a game thats bug free.

Vampire,

You have a good point. Since you are a programmer and don't seem to know the difference between access and assess, programming errors are to be expected. What company do you work for and what games are you working on? I would like to avoid them.

It's understandable that programming takes time, but take the time to do it right. That's what the testers are for.

Thanks VampireHunter Z,

That makes sense. I am just frustrated with R6. Literally, 1 out 3 games played will casue me grief. I know it is not my connection, it is those awful bugs. UbiSoft has the ability to clean these games up prior to shipping. Unfortunatley, it will not be as cost effective as they would like. Too bad, thier product should match thier reputation, showing that SCDA & R6 need to be cleaned up!

It is completely obvious that many people posting here either

a) Have no experience what so ever programming commercial software or

b) Do not or have not worked for a company that releases software intensive products.

I work for a company that produces hardware and software specifically designed to run on that hardware. I can tell you that market pressures will always trump some level of quality, especially if it is possible to release and fix. Plus, no matter how long you spend tweaking software, there will always be bugs...always!

This is the nature of our modern world, and like it or not, video game entertainment is a very high tech, high cost industry to play in. A good question to ask when you encounter a bug is: "does this make the game unplayable?" If the answer is "yes" the developers did not do their job. If the answer is "no, but it's really annoying" then it's on the block for a patch at some point, so stop your complaining.

*btsavage (#27) ~ Thank you for your wisdom and arrogance (get-off your high horse).

You are missing the point. I didn't say the games would be "bug free", I said the quality should match the reputation. Case in point ~ UbiSoft had SCDA(360) ready to ship in March, 2006. I purchased my 360 just for this game alone. 7 months passed, let me repeat that, 7 MONTHS PASSED while UbiSoft (Montreal) built the other-console game editions. In those seven months, do you think UbiSoft could have tweaked the multiplayer and avoid the several bugs within it? Definitely! Did they? Well, let me say this: the multiplayer game play for SCDA is less than desirable. That game freezes more than R6 :(

It's not a matter of understanding the game development industry. We want what we paid for. These companies make boo-koo bucks. I'm not expecting perfection, but I am expecting a quality game for the money.

you know i feared this from the start. after a couple of games came out with issues and needed patching, i hoped this wasn't going to become a trend. and now a year down the line and its a common occurence. that was the beauty of console gaming. the last generation of consoles didn't have the means to patch your games so went through rigorous testing. now console games are becoming more and more like PC games. developers seem to have that 'release now and fix later' mentality we have seen from PC games developers.

*sigh* how things have changed. it looks like we'll be forever buying beta games and getting the finished game months later via a patch.

I don't think it's such a big deal when the patches coming out are for multiplayer stuff; that way it doesn't bother people who don't have Xbox Live. Of course, you could just not buy the game for the first month after it comes out and let the problems iron themselves out.

Ha ha, Welcome to PC gaming folks. PC Gamers have been experiencing this for years. Looks like the trend has crossed over to consoles.

This is just to let any of you Rainbow Six Fans out there to know about an Official Rainbow Six Fan Site.
Just follow this link.

http://www.dantes-casino.com/r6/?friend=5AppEr