The "least worst" solution
Ultima fans, unfortunately, can remember a time when a very different EA would have been willing to push “a game riddled with bugs on the eve of release” out the door anyway.
If anyone was skeptical that EA has changed, and then changed a lot, in the decade (and more) since Ultima 9‘s release, the fate of NBA Elite 11 should serve as an interesting counterexample to their prejudices.
According to CEO John Riccitiello, EA’s perhaps unprecedented decision to cancel NBA Elite 11 so late in its development was his. “There aren’t many decisions that are essentially squarely on my desk,” he told Kotaku. “This was one.”
Riccitiello found this to be the least worst solution to the problem of a game riddled with bugs on the eve of release — a “bad game,” as EA Sports’ Andrew Wilson put it. Either EA could have launched the game as it was (against the impressive NBA 2K11 competition), delayed it beyond the limited release window for basketball games (which would have drastically reduced market share and given the team less time to work on the next sequel), or it could cut its losses. “So there’s the table: You can ship a product you’re not proud of and compete for marginal share; [or] you can delay the game to get a better product, but that’s going to have a knock-on effect,” Riccitiello recalled. “And we made what I judged to be the best call given the circumstances.”
This is a very different calculus, and a reminder that the EA we knew is very different from the EA that exists today. I can’t help but wonder what would have been Ultima 9’s fate under this vastly different approach toward games.
I mean, on one hand, it’s possible that it might have ended up on the chopping block, which would have been very bad. But then, RPGs aren’t time-limited, as far as release windows go, in the same way that sports games are; it’s pretty to think that Origin might have been given a bit more time to fix a few more bugs, tweak a few plot points, and in so doing ship a somewhat delayed — but overall much more solid — game.
Although the way EA decide the fate of games may have changed, apparently their project management (which ultimately leads to such fate) has not. EA has time and time again had to cancel games or release them full of bugs, and this has apparently not changed in all these years. EA is evidently not capable of meeting their own deadlines.
Moreover in the case of Ultima 9, delaying it further would have been ridiculous. It was 5 years in development and yet was released full of bugs. How much time can you possibly need to create a good and polished game?
It serves to note that part of Ultima 9‘s delay stemmed from rewrites and engine changes, both of which are often project-killers. The fact that it weathered several such events is…fortunate, if not a little impressive. Had such events not transpired, though…
Is EA as a whole not capable of meeting its own deadlines? That’s probably true of individual studios (as in this case), at which point EA’s top level has to make a decision to ship or sink the project in its less-than-ready state.
That’s the takeaway here, I think: EA is more willing now to take a loss when a studio fails to deliver. It’s actually a good sign, I think.
“Moreover in the case of Ultima 9, delaying it further would have been ridiculous. It was 5 years in development and yet was released full of bugs. How much time can you possibly need to create a good and polished game?”
About 14 to 15 years in the case of Duke Nukem Forever. 😛