likely despite MS since i assume it was in dev before they were bought.
i mean, MS finalized the acquisition a bit more than 2 years ago. certainly the game started before MS but MS was around for around 1/2 of the development cycle. clearly MS was in charge when the decision to release this game was made. how much of the game (as released) was the original vision or did MS come in post-acquisition and insert their own priorities?
i don't think we'll ever "know" but it's fun to speculate. xD
#1
Zenimax started the game and definitely deserves a lot of blame but Microsoft should have polished it up or cancelled it years ago. How the heck did both this and Infinite get delayed so much yet still release with so many issues?
i'm not in game development but i am in software development. I often talk or think about the triangle of priorities:
this isn't quite the triangle i like because with software "cost" is generally fixed. aka the size of the team doesn't usually get bigger when we're ask to do more. management always loves to fix a release date even before talking to development about the feature because they signed a contract with a customer having never talked to the dev team. so then it's down to negotiating on scope and quality and as you can imagine we always get statements like:
"i'm not asking you to make low quality software. quality is our #1 priority. ...but i need this scope on this date
so you'll just need to find a creative way to meet those goals."
aka, quality is thrown out the window but they refuse to take the blame for the consequences of their decision.
every.fudgy.release.
