Grand Theft Auto Online "launched" Tuesday, and it was about as successful as the Challenger.
For one of the most highly anticipated features of the fastest selling video game of all time to fail so spectacularly might be seen as a minor setback, but for each day it's not working properly more and more people who have already completed the single player content are trading the title in at retailers.
While Rockstar is hard at work triaging the feature, hundreds of thousands of players struggle to even connect. I've been successful once, and it immediately crashed upon attempting the first tutorial mission, a story heard all too often on social media.
The biggest thing I have to applaud Rockstar for is that they have disabled the microtransactions in the title until they've got it all fixed, which might also be a sign of an upcoming server wipe, such that all players can start on an equal footing. However, I have to wonder how much QA testing they did on the online component of the game, and how much they communicated with Sony and Microsoft to ensure that things would be properly handled on their end. With GTA Online being announced so late into development, and coming so quickly after launch, it feels like a rush job, and it's been handled like one so far too.
Withholding the online component of the title for a week after release was a pretty solid idea on their part, but they went about it poorly. With the 25 million copies sold of GTAIV, they should have anticipated a larger player base, and with early sales reports coming in as well, they should have been better prepared. With 3 day sales reaching 1 billion dollars, factoring in the $60 retail price point, that's almost 17 million copies sold, and with their Social Club integration, they had live statistics on how many people were playing the game, and more importantly, how many had completed it and were waiting for the online component.
There's not a whole lot more to be said on the topic for now, with the online component still being nigh unplayable, so if this is your main motivation for getting GTAV, I'd give it a few more weeks for them to iron out the wrinkles. I had planned on giving GTA Online a separate review at some point in the future, but with the state it launched in, that's looking to be farther and farther away.
For one of the most highly anticipated features of the fastest selling video game of all time to fail so spectacularly might be seen as a minor setback, but for each day it's not working properly more and more people who have already completed the single player content are trading the title in at retailers.
While Rockstar is hard at work triaging the feature, hundreds of thousands of players struggle to even connect. I've been successful once, and it immediately crashed upon attempting the first tutorial mission, a story heard all too often on social media.
The biggest thing I have to applaud Rockstar for is that they have disabled the microtransactions in the title until they've got it all fixed, which might also be a sign of an upcoming server wipe, such that all players can start on an equal footing. However, I have to wonder how much QA testing they did on the online component of the game, and how much they communicated with Sony and Microsoft to ensure that things would be properly handled on their end. With GTA Online being announced so late into development, and coming so quickly after launch, it feels like a rush job, and it's been handled like one so far too.
Withholding the online component of the title for a week after release was a pretty solid idea on their part, but they went about it poorly. With the 25 million copies sold of GTAIV, they should have anticipated a larger player base, and with early sales reports coming in as well, they should have been better prepared. With 3 day sales reaching 1 billion dollars, factoring in the $60 retail price point, that's almost 17 million copies sold, and with their Social Club integration, they had live statistics on how many people were playing the game, and more importantly, how many had completed it and were waiting for the online component.
There's not a whole lot more to be said on the topic for now, with the online component still being nigh unplayable, so if this is your main motivation for getting GTAV, I'd give it a few more weeks for them to iron out the wrinkles. I had planned on giving GTA Online a separate review at some point in the future, but with the state it launched in, that's looking to be farther and farther away.
No comments:
Post a Comment