I think if someone were to, say.. go back in time and erase DMC and MGS from history, the trailer would've made us pee our pants. Oh and the first episode of the Berserk anime too. Musn't forget that one.

Yeah, Forza was delayed 6+ months. MS allowed them to slip out of the important holiday period -- higher sales and the PS3 had little software to compete -- and allowed them to slide significantly.

Hard to argue MS forced FM2 out the door.

And any developer will tell you their game could use more work. There comes a point where more time results in fewer and fewer results. Because a game has a bug here and some slow down there doesn't mean the title was rushed out the door. As a business if you can a) release early, with less competition and b) hit an important sales period, the benefit of releasing in such situations can significantly offset any minor issues.

It is a lot like developing a website. The first 10-20 hours of development of a small biz site sees a lot of work done, and 20-40 hours can be the difference in a typical site and a polished site. After 40 hours on a smaller biz site you may be doing a lot of work, tweaking, adjustments, bug fixing, untuitive design adjustments, etc but the value of such goes down to the business and the users. Same applies to games.

Perfect Dark was a launch title so that's hardly fair and other games such as Gears, Blue Dragon and DOA4 had to make certain dates for their own reasons. I don't think from that however, you can say MS typically rush development of their games. Lots of MGS stuff have had their releases pushed back.

Everybody spent months making E3 demos before last year. It was just the thing to do.

While the story of Too Human sounds really great, and the RPG elements sound like they could make the game deep and rewarding, there still is little genuine gameplay being shown to prove that the combat system -- the bread and butter -- is fluid, diverse, deep, and rewarding. These games live and die on combat. And the later the game goes into this generation of software the firmer the competition becomes with DMC4, Heavenly Sword, and NG2 now competition instead of having 2006 to itself (or even early 2007). Seeing how Ninja Theory was able to do an awesome cinematic/intelligent camera without overhyping it I do worry that Too Human is in between a rock and a hard place.

And graphically I think it is downgraded a lot instead of expected "looking better as time goes on". The original and early media appeared to have better lighting and shadowing giving images more "depth" and they lacked a lot of the artifacting in new media:

http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/748/748783/img_...
http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/748/748783/img_...
http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/748/748783/img_...
http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/748/748783/img_...
http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/748/748783/img_...
http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/748/748783/img_...

The new stuff has some problems that make the images look "busy" with glittering artifacts.

http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/748/748783/img_...
http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/748/748783/img_...

SK has a lot of work ahead of them. I really do want to see some long stretches (minutes in a row) of gameplay where they demo the combat -- not some newb and not some cutscene. I want to see if the game has the awkward unbreakables with collision issues and floating powers. I thought HS did an awesome job with momentum and fluid combat and am hoping Too Human can do the same.

This game is a roller coaster. I went from uninterested, to interested, to uninterested. Only quality gameplay really matters to me at this point. More cut scenes, renders, and complaining doesn't do it for me.

Yet back up and distinguish between: Dropped features because we were rushed (even after a 6 month delay) and between "we over estimated our abilities, that of the hardware, etc". Can you say conclusively with another 6 months FM2 would not have dropped those graphical features?

Not all developers are created the same.In Dyack's world no game should be shown until it is ready for release.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_conte...
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/200...
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=1571...
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=...
http://www.fiercegamebiz.com/story/silicon-knights...
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070430/wallis_...
http://blogs.ign.com/silicon-knights/2007/03/22/50...
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3158015

There is even a chart out there -- Dyack even argues at some points games should be finished and sit 6 months while the advertising train kicks off.

Was Too Human shown too early? Yes. Did MS urge SK to show Too Human? Yes. Is MS to blame for Too Human's slow development? No. Has MS invested 10s of millions into Too Human and, as typically is, SK has an obligation to build a return on that investment? Yes.

While it is unfortunate that SK showed a poor Too Human sample, a) MS didn't rush a release, only a demo -- and has supported a delay and b) in many ways SK has to know, MUST know, that regardless of their advertising stancing that big publishers have a lot of strategic responsibilities and having a small 3-5 minute demo for the BIGGEST gaming show in the world should have been on the design path.

BioWare, at the same E3, demonstrated a long stretch of dialogue. It was the only finalized set in the game and only dialogue tree that fully worked. They spent time raising the bar in that one area to show it off, and then spent the next 18 months raising the rest of the game to the same level.

Why SK couldn't get 1 arena, ala HS, to work right for 3 minutes has a lot to do with lack of planning on SK's part. They could have gone the route companies like Bungie, Valve, etc go and build their game first on pared down technology, and then add the graphics and features last. This way they could have demonstrated full functional gameplay + "final graphics" trailers.

So SK is as much to blame for not developing working sandbox areas in their game. Which is one thing that really scares me. These days any and all games should be built gameplay first...

Bungie at the same E3 showed off a trailer plus behind the scene demo. Bioware with Mass Effect did some media footage and a demo behind the scenes.

SK hooked up with some print media before E3, got some praise, and then was demoing the game at E3 in an obviously broken build. MS didn't turn their hands and tell them they had to show the broken aspects or let newbs play.

Like I said, Bioware had 1 scene -- 1! -- that they prepared for E3, and that was it. Bungie had 1 sandbox to move around in the same area of the trailer.

You cannot tell me putting the controller in the hands of newbs -- always a big mistake -- in an obviously broken build -- another mistake which can be minimized by only allowing staff to control it -- is a good idea. Further, even Denis noted that they "could" have done a small arena demo like HS but they wanted to show off the camera, seemless loading (haha) and such.

Their demonstration was illconceived for the stage of development. MS doesn't typically tell developers they have to show off all these features and such. In fact, it is Denis who was hyping said features.

He felt content getting praise for Too Human before E3, and afterwars was VERY VERY bitter at ANY criticism. Not just that MS made them show it, but he was outright UNRECEPTIVE to any criticism on 1UP, even insinuating threats.

Anyhow, comparing Bungie isn't even relevant. Bungie has earned MS over a half billion in revenue (before we even count Live subscriptions, DLC, marketing agreements, Xbox sales, etc). SK hasn't and is on the MS bankroll. Halo is a known quanity and on a quasi blackout to focus hype toward launch; Too Human is building awareness. Halo 3 was a "done when it is done" title; Too Human was intended to be a 2006 title.

And now it is a 2008 one.

Which totally, absolutely, trashes your original premise about MS pushing games out the door. When a title slips from 2006 to 2008, that isn't pushing titles out the door. MS has delayed a lot of titles. Do they push some out? Yes, because it is necessary at times for various reasons. Launch titles need to be there at launch (although it should be noted that PDZ, while a launch title, was given a looong dev time on the Xbox and ditto Kameo, they were NOT pushed out, were delayed, and then migrated).Denis blasting EGM/1UP for critical comments made him look like an ass -- especially after his rant about the INDUSTRY needs more critical journalists (go read my links).

Denis looked like an ass because he uber hyped the game features about revolutionary, hollywood, blowing stuff away and users away when they saw it and they noted that they could have gone with a simpler approach but, because of hyping all these features, they wanted to show them off. And it totally fell flat -- the same build that was praised weeks before.

Interestingly, you connect this with Turn10 and FM2. They actually have a lot in common -- a focus on featuresets and hype over content. A game like Bioshock, for example, was hyped due to press previews a long time ago. Mass Effect hit the hype train at the E3 demo.

Games that hype features -- that are NOT developed yet -- tend to get slammed when they fail to meet their own hype.

Games that build hype by showing features tend to garner praise.

Denis would have been better off a. not overhyping his games features and b. slowly, as features WORK, showing them off one by one. Do what EA does with Madden.

Instead, since they hyped the project's many goals, they felt compelled to demo it all instead of a small sandbox. Seeing how HS started with a small sandbox at the same E3 (and on camera controlled by staff), and has gradually shown more and more features as time went on it is clear what approach is best.

And that blame can be pointed at SK.

MS may have had them show it -- they are being bankrolled and MS wants to see something in return for $20M -- but SK clearly was behind on development, nasty with the press about any criticism, and had hyped features they hadn't even made yet, let alone fine tuned. They wanted to show more than they should have and would have done better if they only had shown a small VERY high quality aspect of the game instead of a broken streaming, broken AI, poor collision detection, jerky animation and framerate, and totally wonked out camera build trying to get people to "imagine" the features.

Talk about your naked king!The first extra 6 month delay didn't do much for visuals (actually they cut even more features). If 6 months didn't produce a "great impact" why would another 6 months?