It appears you have not yet registered with our community. To register please click here...

 
Go Back [M] > Madshrimps > WebNews
EA claims Sim City atrocity was a success EA claims Sim City atrocity was a success
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read


EA claims Sim City atrocity was a success
Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 29th July 2013, 08:51   #1
[M] Reviewer
 
Stefan Mileschin's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Romania
Posts: 148,055
Stefan Mileschin Freshly Registered
Default EA claims Sim City atrocity was a success

EA Games is doing its level best to play down the disaster which was the launch of its most recent Sim City game.

According to VentureBeat, EA Games' Frank Gibeau is reframing the whole disaster by boasting the company had flogged 2 million copies.

He added that the number of people logging in and playing is holding steady.

All those problems Sim City had were only in the first week of the launch and caused because EA had underestimated demand in the first month, he said.

That is not how we remember it. In fact, we think it was probably the worst launch since North Korean's last 'satellite'.

EA made the same mistake the world has come to expect of it - thinking that DRM will save the day. In this case, users of Sim City had to log in to EA's servers to verify that they had a legitimate copy.

The only problem is that EA had forgotten to buy enough servers to run its DRM system so the whole lot crashed.

In the first three days it was also clear that the game did not work and EA had to issue patches that disabled chunks of features.

Fans were also cross that the game did not have an offline mode. In fact, EA said it was impossible to play the game offline. But it turned out that this was not quite true and EA had installed some code in the game which limited it to offline play for... 20 minutes.

Then it was discovered that the GlassBox Engine which powered the life in the game was doing some odd things. A simulated human would not go to their home at night, they would just go to the nearest home, We would have thought that this could have caused all sorts of marital and social problems. Instead of driving on empty roads, sims would take the shortest path available, when that led straight into congestion. Building bi-passes was pointless because they would ignore them.

Then there was the small matter of the sewage plants exploding.

It was one of the most catastrophic launches in video game history and even after EA fixed the server problem, the software didn't work properly.

Yet Gibeau seems to gauge those sales, most of them based on preview coverage and pre-release media, as a success.

In other words, a game is now a success if a publisher drums up enough excitement and hype for people to buy a broken game - never mind the enormous disappointment and outrage afterwards.

http://news.techeye.net/software/ea-...-was-a-success
Stefan Mileschin is online now   Reply With Quote
Reply


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
MPAA claims Megaupload shutdown was "massive success" Stefan Mileschin WebNews 0 7th December 2012 07:45
Nokia about to kill off any chance of Lumia success Stefan Mileschin WebNews 0 1st October 2012 07:57
GeForce GTX 680 A Sellout Success: NVIDIA Stefan Mileschin WebNews 0 1st June 2012 08:44
Customers Find Success With Microsoft Private Cloud Stefan Mileschin WebNews 0 19th April 2012 08:09
Turrican wins HWBOT Jan '10 OC Challenge - Contest big success! Massman WebNews 1 2nd February 2010 15:02
The true mark of Blu-ray's success, a Toshiba player Shogun WebNews 0 21st July 2009 03:52
The RV770 Story: Documenting ATI's Road to Success jmke WebNews 2 3rd December 2008 22:59
How AMD will seek to limit Intel’s Core chip success jmke WebNews 0 3rd August 2007 14:21
AMD’s 90nm process, a success story? jmke WebNews 0 1st December 2004 10:02
CRYTEK Ditches Ubisoft after FarCry success jmke WebNews 0 30th July 2004 16:05

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 18:06.


Powered by vBulletin® - Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Content Relevant URLs by vBSEO