Post
by waltc » June 9th, 2019, 9:05 pm
Last year it was BTIV 2.0, due in Early '19. Early '19 came along with the news that "BT4 2.0" was now "BT4 Director's Cut," slated for a June 2019 release--no ifs, ands, or buts about it. June was the--to quote Amazon--"guaranteed ship date." And now more than a week into June 2019, the DC has been put off until "late summer 2019"--with, again, no actual ship date mentioned. At any of the dates previously promised the notion that "it might ship in June, but it might not," was never imparted. So I guess now it's "It might ship in 'late summer,' or it might not"? Accurate? It's kind of sad to see June slip by while inXile writes about it as if the company had never said the DC would ship in June. Why wait for June to declare that June was out? I'm not sure what Microsoft buying the company might have to do with this as aside from flushing inXile with cash and taking a load off--I can't see that being a negative for game development. At any rate, InXile hasn't actually claimed that the Microsoft purchase is what has caused this further delay.
So much of the stuff that is slated for the DC was asked for in the original 2015 KS, IIRC. It was ignored then, for some reason that isn't at all apparent. So much of it--like adequate/inexhaustible inventory space--vendors who could actually buy the stuff you'd bring them to sell without "running out of room!" *cough*--are part and parcel of most really good current RPGs released even before 2015--not oddities, not unusual, at all. Ditto "save anywhere, anytime," etc. So InXile doesn't include any of these asked-for features--and then after the game ships has to go back into it and essentially rebuild it with many of the features that, as I mentioned, were originally asked for but denied. Doesn't that seem like a huge waste of time when much of it might have been avoided by simply listening better during the 2015 KS?
I would ask that InXile not add insult to injury and pretend that it was common knowledge that the DC might not ship in June--it wasn't--rather, it was common knowledge that the DC would ship in June. Your "letting us know about the progress of the DC" is a far cry from letting us have the finished DC in June--which your customers were counting on because that is what you told them to count on.
One last bone to pick...InXile mentioned awhile back that for obvious reasons it was not going to finish the Mac and Linux versions until *after* the Windows version was finished--since the ports to the other two OSes would be 100% dependent on a finished Windows Director's Cut version--which could only happen *after* the Windows DC was complete. That much of it is entirely rational and necessary. But now, it would appear that even though the Windows version of the DC is finished--what? 3-4 months ahead of the Mac & Linux DC versions--inXile is going to hold the Windows version back until it completes the Mac Linux ports of the Windows DC version...? You know--it's reminiscent of the old saw about how trying to please everybody often winds up pleasing almost nobody. Wish you guys would think about these things a bit more deeply. Somebody at InXile is not thinking about these things as paying customers think about them.
