Batman: Arkham Origins patch coming next week to address major bugs, WB apologizes
Apparently, many players have been experiencing serious bugs in Batman: Arkham Origins. Crucially, one bug affects the ability to actually play the game at all, with "Continue" no longer showing up in the game's main menu. Another bug has the Batman falling out of the world in an endless loop, making it impossible to complete certain missions and progress through the campaign.
"We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank you all for your patience as we work to resolve the issues," the company said in a statement. And of course, a patch is in the works.
A patch will fix many--but not all--of the major bugs WB has identified. The title update will be available on platforms next week.
With regards to the infinite loop, the patch should push players back to their previous save, so they will no longer be stuck. Gamers that can't see the "Continue" option will see it restored. The "Shadow Vigilante" rank 3 bonus will properly unlock.
However, there are still issues that WB has identified but will need to "continue to investigate." Xbox 360 players are experiencing corrupted saves. "We believe we know what is causing this and need a few more days to validate before pushing a patch through," a rep said on the community forums (via Eurogamer).
In addition, the Xbox 360 version of the game has "recurring crashing and freezing." Once again, WB seems to know what is causing the issues, but will "need a few more days to validate before pushing this patch through." A quick fix is to avoid having your Xbox 360 connected to the internet in order to keep on playing.
It appears there's quite a lot to fix. And given your feedback on our review, it appears many of you have been affected by some of these bugs.
-
Shacknews
replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Batman: Arkham Origins patch coming next week to address major bugs, WB apologizes.
Apparently, many players have been experiencing serious bugs in Batman: Arkham Origins. Crucially, one bug affects the ability to actually play the...-
-
Apparently XBox cert testing didn't notice that "Continue" was missing.
One of the biggest sins of the 7th Console Generation mentality of game development is that once a release date is announced, it must not, under any circumstances, get delayed. Sometimes a week or a few weeks is acceptable, but getting delayed out of a fiscal quarter is the worst possible outcome. Therefore, the game gets shipped to cert at least 4 weeks before the scheduled release date, sometimes earlier. And apparently, sometimes it gets shipped to cert in whatever condition it's in.
There are a few examples of games getting shipped broken:
- 2010: NBA Elite 11, which actually did ship to cert and had a demo released, but later got delayed ( http://www.shacknews.com/article/65765/electronic-arts-delays-nba-elite ), and then outright pulled by EA before warehouses shipped it to retail stores, and outright cancelled, due to the "jesus pose" bug. ( http://www.shacknews.com/article/66301/nba-elite-11-officially-canceled )
- 2011: Skyrim, which released on November 11, and four days later, Bethesda PR VP Pete Hines was saying to fans, "Calm down, we're working on it." ( http://www.shacknews.com/article/71099/bethesda-urges-patience-on-skyrim-patches ). There were tons of issues on the console versions, especially on PS3; the Steam version got patched more frequently, thanks to the lack of certification resulting in no obstacle for quick updates.
- 2012: Medal of Honor Warfighter, which underwent a massive gigabyte-plus "Day One Patch" (yes, EA used the terminology "Day One Patch": http://battlelog.medalofhonor.com/mohw/news/view/2832654786849984138/ ). EA also did not send the game to reviewers prior to release, preferring instead to send the game out on release day, along with a stack of pizzas, and the Day One Patch notes printed out on paper.
And apparently Batman: Arkham Origins is going to be "that game" for 2013 that needed a release-window patch to fix game-breaking bugs. Unless a yet-unreleased game does worse, that is.-
Great synopsis. I'm a project manager for a couple teams of software developers (not game industry) and what you described is the big point of contention that we have with our C-level management right now.
Basically you can draw a triangle with points labeled "features, "quality", and "release date" and you can draw a dot in that triangle leaning toward the points you value most. You can think of it as "choose two of these things" to strive for.
Our upper management is doing exactly what these companies you described are doing- they've decided that release date is a fixed point in that triangle and you then need to compromise either features or quality or maybe both, even though the customer is *almost* always okay with waiting a little longer for true quality features.
-
Yeah, at that point you have to push back with, "Do you really want our product to end up in the news because it shipped broken?" It may not be national news, or industry news, but at the very least your company is out contacting its customers for a critical update, and/or bulletins about problems in the release that hit the release date on time.
Maybe it's a gross misinterpretation of the Facebook mantra "DONE IS BETTER THAN PERFECT". When that gets subverted into "DONE IS BETTER THAN GOOD", things have gone very wrong. I found a column by Martin Lindstrom on a quick search for that phrase ( http://www.fastcompany.com/3001533/truth-about-being-done-versus-being-perfect ), and while I haven't read the whole thing, this paragraph resonates:
If you'd entered Facebook’s headquarters sometime around 2010, you’d have seen a sign painted on the wall: “Done is better than perfect.” I have no doubt that if you walked into the offices of any Fortune 100 brand you would see no such thing. Their legal, compliance, or human resources departments would insist on it being removed. And yet, had Facebook waited so much as a year to perfect its model, the company might very well be where MySpace is today.
-
-
Unfortunately, some of this is due to retail and ad penalties.
If I agree to have my product in a retailer ad and my product isn't in stores by the ad date, I have to pay major penalties to the retailer. Depending on the expected profit margins for the game, these penalties may exceed the cost to ship first and patch later.
That said, the cost in consumer confidence is never worth it.-
Thanks; that's a good example of one of the factors pushing toward releasing on time. But what would happen first: getting the game to cert a month or so ahead of time, or the retail ad contracts? If the go / no-go decision needs to be made two or three months prior to the planned release date, and they decided to go, and end up with bugs like this, that could be a potential scenario that ends up in a situation like Batman: Arkham Origins is in now.
-
Major publishers now tend to have their own pre-cert test departments and can tell you far in advance whether or not you'll pass based on the current set of TCR/TRC's you are locked into, and most of the licensed engines handle lots of the technical sides of things for you now.
I can't tell you about how other publishers work. When I was with MGS, no marketing activity would start until we had a go/no-go meeting, where every lead had to agree that the launch date was achievable. That usually happened sixteen (16) weeks before gold. Not every company has a similar process, though.
Unfortunately, the most common problem with development houses nowadays is a lack of support for QA as an integral part of development. Contract development houses rarely have in-house QA; milestone deliverables are often lists of features and don't have stability bars; QA doesn't get assigned to projects until six months before ship, and by the time QA gets it, major systems are built on top of shit; contract development houses are often running on fumes because they underestimate schedules and complexity, partly out of naivete and partly out of willful ignorance to drop their cost estimates to get the contract...it all adds up.
-
-
-
-
-
I've run into a few issues with the game on 360. The first most definitely being the crashing (which has happened about four time and I'm 25% through the game). The second thing I've run into though is that sometimes when I fast travel to the Batcave, any Wayne Tech upgrades I complete in the Batcave revert back to upgrade point when I fast travel back out into the city. Random, I know, but it's happened more than once and every time I forget to look down in the corner and see if the game is auto-saving for me after I apply my upgrade points.
-
I've had only two glitches so far.The first being in one of the predator rooms where after I took down everyone except for the last person that I had to interrogate,he was stuck in a display board and pushing triangle wouldn't work.Had to restart the last check point on that one.
The other one is the Black Mask weapon stash missions.It won't let me go into the church and shows that the last canister isn't destroyed on the map,even though I blew it up and it's gone.This one sucks especially because you can't finish that mission.
Other than those two,I haven't had any issues.
-
