VideoGameCritic wrote:I was just thinking about another way publishers have saved money - by phasing out quality assurance!
Now they just release a buggy beta build, knowing they can always patch it up later. Not only does this same labor and money, but they can get the game out a year earlier!
This is another reason why I continue to embrace physical media. When you burn something to disc or cartridge, most reputable companies will do their best to make sure the game works out of the box. My Switch has been offline for some time, and I never have issues with the games I buy. Obviously there are exceptions, like Doom that requires a huge day 1 "update".
If you download something, all bets are off because they assume you will be receptive to frequent updates.
Sadly, even more recent physical media suffers from rush out the door, patch it later syndrome. Point and case, the last MLB 2K game on the original Xbox, which is now unplayable due to a bug that was patched only via Xbox live. There are countless other console releases in the post-internet world that share the same issue, and several that had quality of life patches that made the game work somewhat normal.
Also, I just installed my Vita copy of Hot Shots Golf last night, and a 500MB patch file was a forced download, the majority of updates in the history of the patch were "bug fix, bug fix, etc."