How do they get away with releasing games like Skyrim on consoles?

[aashell13]

Is your console running hot? that'd be my first guess.

 

[Something Amyss]

Because people lowered their standards to get an experience they normally would not have access to. It's really as simple as that.

Though for the sake of "discussion", I'll add this:

Gamers claim to push past fundamental flaws like game-breaking bugs and glitches if it means they get to play something....and based on my own years of experience with Bethesda fans, as long as those bugs don't happen to them, they're subconsciously convinced they do not exist at all, or exist as a curio item; an exception rather than the norm, even when they occur with alarming frequency.

As evidenced by several responses in this thread (though one or two appeared to be tongue in cheek).

 

[sshakespeare]

I've had relatively few bugs on the 360 with Skyrim, I've had the odd broken questline (mainly thieves guild) and theres 3 copies of a npc outside whiterun, but apart from that it has worked fine ( I didnt even hear "took an arrow to the knee" till at least 50 hours in). The glitchiest games Ive played on the 360 are New Vegas which had numerous saving issues and Crysis 2 which consistently placed enemies inside walls.

It would be better if there was a decent patch system for consoles but there isnt much of a need for it (in my experience anyway)

 

[Mafoobula]

Believe it or not, the PC version isn't too terrific, itself. I saved every few steps and - over the course of two Skyrim-dense weeks - racked up a little over 1,200 individual save files on one character. As a result, before I dumped the first 1,000 or so saves, every file totaled roughly 7.5GB. I think the big problem is the sheer tonnage of stuff the average adventurer has collected. OCD saving, coupled with all my pack-rat tendencies, makes for some lag and even the occasional crash-to-desktop. Mind you, my laptop has a quad-core CPU, 16GB RAM and a GTX580, so you can believe it's not weak hardware to blame

 

[Something Amyss]

My guess is that a lot of posters here are still pretty young, meaning that the 360/PS3 is their first entry into console gaming.

I've seen a lot of the "it works fine, you're a liar!" responses from my peers as far back as the Playstation 1 era. Before that, it's harder to collect data, because even the early days of the Playstation predates the real explosion in internet use.

There was that same fanboyish response to PS1 titles, and to quite a similar extent on PC. This:

Is not a new phenomenon by any stretch of the imagination.

Another example was the Playstation itself. Then the PS2. The Red Ring of Death is not the first time there was a major console issue where people said "Mine works fine, you're wrong/trolling/lying!" Hell, we even had this issue with older consoles. At best, this sort of whining and complaining is made more prevalent by the ubiquitous nature of the interwebs, but it's not new or localised to gamers who cut their teeth on this gen of consoles.

I also remember this reaction specifically to WWF No Mercy.

Though it's now immortalised on wikipedia:

Launch copies of No Mercy suffer from a bug that erases saved content, including created wrestlers, championship story modes, and game saves.

People often denied this was a problem. There were other examples, but this is the one I remember offhand.

 

[Fijiman]

Here's a question, how many save files do you have on Skyrim? If you only have a few save files at any one time then it's just the occasional bug/glitch acting up. If you have a few dozen or are getting close to a hundred files then you should probably think about doing a little cleaning.

Every game made by Bethesda is bugged up the ass.

It's amazing how often people forget this fact. Although, to be fair, to expect games as big as Skyrim to be made without any bugs is like expecting a tank to go through your door without taking out the surrounding walls.(unless they had taken another year or three to make it , in which case it better be at least 85% bug free) Just yesterday I had about four cases where the framerate went to absolute shit for a minute or two and one case where I had to restart my console. To day, however, I was able to play it with only a little trouble.

 

[theheroofaction]

Skyrim actually ran pretty well on my xbox, maybe there was something wrong with your disc reader.

How they get away with releasing games like Fallout:New Vegas on consoles, is beyond me.

Seriously, if skyrim had a bug problem, then FNV had a termite colony.

 

[bullet_sandw1ch]

i smell a pc elitist. you ever think that your console might be defective or overused.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

My Skyrim is fine except for the occasional disappearing body when I need a key from it. Your bug is exceedingly rare so its not really their fault that they missed it.

 

[TomLikesGuitar]

never had a problem on my 360. you must be doing it wrong.

I haven't had any problems like the ones you describe. Just crashes every couple dozen hours.

EDIT: On the 360

Every game has had some sort of problem, somewhere along the lines. Some freeze, some glitch, some malfunction, or some accident. There has never been a perfect game. And this is the first time I've heard about Skyrim doing that.

Just because something happens to you. Does not mean it happens to every single person who purchases the game.

All games crash, some more then others.

I don't get that many glitches in mine, it has frozen a couple of times, mostly in the menu system if I try and go through it too quickly, I've also had giants stuck in the ground, dragons faceplanting a cliff, that sort of thing, but I find that more funny than irritating.

That's your disc. Works perfectly fine for me.

Because NOTHING is perfect

Just reset and get over it.

A few things...

It's not the disc.

Just because YOU didn't have the problem doesn't meant that it ISN'T a problem. Most people agree that Bethesda games are especially buggy, and to sit back and say that someone is "doing it wrong", or that they shouldn't complain is kind of ridiculous.

Not all games crash.

To justify the game crashing is total bull. This isn't an attack on consoles as much as it is an attack on lackadaisical debugging.

 

[Riki Darnell]

Well I like that they do release to console because I don't feel like buying a thousand dollar computer just to play the newest games. With a console I have at least 4-5 years before I have to buy a new one. (side note, I've had a normal 360 and an elite and neither have red ringed. BUT I did have huge issues with a PS3 I had once)

 

[jelock]

To answer the title question: Because people are willing to buy it?

It's like FalloutJack said, every game has problems. How big's the save file, timewise? I ask, only because I remember seeing people complaining about similar problems once their playtime hit a certain amount.

I'm at about 90 hours, and I know people will say 'well there's your problem' but again my point is that shouldn't be a problem.

I'm not renting the game; I should be able to play it as long as I want without constantly thinking 'I wonder how long before it crashes this time.'

Assuming you are playing on PS3 I think the issue is actually to do with the number of saves, not the time of one. Try deleting some of the older ones and see if that helps improve.

 

[BNguyen]

well...my 360 works fine so shut up
in fact, I have two, not because one broke but because I got a second one free

By the way, quit whining about the game getting glitchy - current generation consoles may be good but they are not perfect, nothing is and nothing ever will be and whining about it isn't going to make the situation better
good questions for your situation may be - how are you keeping your console? are you treating it like a toy? or an expensive and fragile device? What about the game discs? are they scratched or dirty? how old is your system?

 

[Terminate421]

A few things...

It's not the disc.

Just because YOU didn't have the problem doesn't meant that it ISN'T a problem. Most people agree that Bethesda games are especially buggy, and to sit back and say that someone is "doing it wrong", or that they shouldn't complain is kind of ridiculous.

Not all games crash.

And you totally missed my point.

I said games crash. Halo: Reach has froze on me before, Pokemon Diamond crashed on me once (No loss of save data, thank god) Skyrim has crashed on me once. Gears of war 2 crashed on me once.

Programs can crash, no exceptions.

I said no game is perfect, deal with it. You on the other hand seem to feel that I am some Butthurt fanboy. Honestly, it doesn't matter, I suggested just turn it off then turn it back on like a normal person should do.

Shit happens.

 

[Wanderer787]

As I keep saying, all my old consoles work perfectly (I still have a fully functioning Gameboy and Megadrive I) but I've had to replace both my current gen consoles within two years of owning them at most (my 360 actually RRoD'd in under a year.)

We're going backwards.

To be fair, the older consoles were less sophisticated, so there were fewer complex pieces that could malfunction.

As to how companies "get away" with things like this? Because people are willing to pay money for luxury products. Honestly, it's not like hardware companies are sitting in a back office, twirling Snidely K. Whiplash mustaches and cackling maniacally about how they're going to somehow force people to buy a luxury product that they clearly intended to never work so as to ruin their reputations and lose money in the future. Sometimes tough decisions have to be made about how much time and development cost is acceptable for a project before it would have to be scrapped for being too expensive. The money made off of sales will increase the budget available for fixing bugs and hardware issues down the line, or so the business reasoning goes.

Finally, it's not like people who are unsatisfied have no alternative. You're perfectly free to not buy a luxury product like a game console. It's not like "they" are going to show up at your house, hammer nails into your genitalia and then attach a car battery to them if you don't buy their products. If you're unsatisfied, find an alternative product (or even alternative hobby, such as board-gaming) that you enjoy more.

 

[FalloutJack]

-A bloody mess-

Then, by the gods, be more concise! Misleading topic is misleading!

 

[Freechoice]

Skyrim actually ran pretty well on my xbox, maybe there was something wrong with your disc reader.

How they get away with releasing games like Fallout:New Vegas on consoles, is beyond me.

Seriously, if skyrim had a bug problem, then FNV had a termite colony.

Because Obsidian is overworked and underappreciated. Short dev cycle is what stopped KotoR2 from being unilaterally superior to KotoR1.

A few things...

It's not the disc.

Just because YOU didn't have the problem doesn't meant that it ISN'T a problem. Most people agree that Bethesda games are especially buggy, and to sit back and say that someone is "doing it wrong", or that they shouldn't complain is kind of ridiculous.

Not all games crash.

To justify the game crashing is total bull. This isn't an attack on consoles as much as it is an attack on lackadaisical debugging.

Isn't it neat how console gamers will talk about the uniformity of their hardware as an advantage over PC's and then tell other console owners that experience problems that they're "doing it wrong"?

 

[Torrasque]

never had a problem on my 360. you must be doing it wrong.

This.
I had lag and framerate issues a couple of time, but they were always fixed by a patch, fixed by me just doing something different, or me just going to a different area.
For example, if you put a thousand daggers on the ground and then blow them up with a fireball, you are going to have a lot of lag.
If you have a glitch dragon that flies around backwards at mach 29, you are going to have lag.
If you randomly have steam shoot out of your shoulders like you are a dwarven automaton (like what happened to my rogue), you are going to have a bit of lag.

It is not a problem with Skyrim persay, but your xbox itself or what you are doing.

To answer your question: because some people would rather play it on a console than a computer, or they don't have a computer that can play it. If Skyrim was compatible with my mac, hell yes I would play it on my mac. But its not.