Even so, they could still continue to the "nothing is happening" way of life.

It was a silly exaggeration, but I hope you got the point of the rest of what I said. It would hurt my image immensely, and future customers would be skeptical about hiring me. What would be my excuse? "I create beautiful, unique, deep websites, but they sometimes don't work for a small percentage of your audience". Nope, not in a million years.

PS3 firmware updates come on the disc with games released after the firmware's online release.

EDIT: To http://www.gamesas.com/user/651842-thefalkon/: No, not all manufacturers should be held to the same standard as automobile manufacturers. It's a different beast altogether when your product means the life or death of your customers. This is just a game. The response should be a refund or some other compromise. I'd settle for a free pc version.

I guess the number of people who have a ps3 and don't have the internet are a statistically insignificant number of customers. I mean, seriously, who doesn't have the internet anymore?

Isn't there a way to use the pen drive to update things?

Kotaku scored an interview with Todd Howard and asked the question. He couldn't exactly respond with silence like Bethesda can with message board users.

We just didn't realize the lag would get *that bad*.

I understand your point and I agree with you 100%. My main point is that Bethesda should be held accountable for this (as would any manufacturer), and this thread is serving that purpose.

The last estimate was ~40% of all consoles sold are not connected to the internet.

Yep, total agreement.
Any citation to back that up? 77 million users had their information compromised by that hacker attack, implying that that many users had access to the internet via their ps3. Seeing as only 62 million units have sold as of December of last year, I'd say that 77 million users probably covers more than 40% of the customer base even when accounting for ps3's having multiple users on the machine.

Excuse my invasion, but I think Sony never said "unique users". I, for one, have 2 different accounts on my PS3, and many more people do the same. What if 1/3 of those 77 million people have double accounts? 25.666667 million accounts are crossed out as doubles, narrowing the unique users to ~51.300.000+.

Of course, I'm just adding to the conversation. If the source of the original statement is posted, my statement is automatically disregarded.

The ~40% number is all consoles worldwide bub. (Wii, 360, and PS3...I have no clue who conducted the study as it was years ago...I have a thing with numbers though so that's why I recall the average percentage...PS3 users in the US are actually the most connected of the three consoles at something like ~78% being online)

Well, we are talking about the ps3 here, so that's the number we need to work with.

Still, 22% of 62 million is around 14 million. Not a number to shrug off but still not the main customer base.

There are so many things wrong with this whole Skyrim-on-PS3 -thing, it's not even funny (or excusable) anymore.

First of all, Bethesda knew how the PS3 console handles things, they knew they had to do things differently in order to get it running (well) on that console. It's not as easy to program for the PS3 as it is for the PC or the Xbox 360, we know that already and developers have known about that since they first started developing for the platform. When Howard says that it “depends on how they play the game”, then maybe they should have spent even more time testing the different versions of the game. Skyrim is a game that is advertised as being an adventure where you decide how you want to play it. If doing exactly that causes problems then why even bother?

I can understand that it's hard as hell to test all the possible scenarios, maybe even impossible, but saying that is just not acceptable. They don't give me the game, let me play it the way I want and then as for the money. They want the money upfront, promised a game where I can play just as I want and then say it's not broken, I'm just playing it differently so I encounter problems.

The should have not bothered with a release at all if they cannot release a completely working product. We shouldn't be asked to pay (full price) for a game that may break completely depending on how we play it – not if 'play as you want' is a significant part of the game's gameplay. We shouldn't be asked to pay for an experience that will break because you play the game as intended by the developer.

Prior to release, the company made sure we all think everything will be fine this time around. They made sure to talk about how the PS3 version is running just fine, just as fine as the Xbox 360 version, they made sure we think that they're using a new engine that works better on the PS3. They basically simply lied to us the whole time.

Sony didn't care either. They knew the game was broken, there's absolutely no way they didn't know about that. Some guy on here said that QA and Certification doesn't really step in just because a game isn't running well, but that they'll step in if things like Trophies don't work properly. Aside from the game being unplayable (frame rate, freezing, etc), Trophies didn't work either – at least one Trophy did not work in Non-English versions. So Sony must have known at least about parts of the problems, and they didn't do anything about it. Skyrim simply was too big to fail and Sony didn't want to miss out because the game was shipping broken on their platform.

Meanwhile, smaller developers and publishers get bullied into re-submitting and tweaking their smaller PSN games because SCEE encountered small bugs. Trine 2 is still not released in Europe because they've encountered problems. Problems that SCEA QA & Certification didn't encounter, problems that no one talks about because no one experienced them. Everyone says the game feels and plays just fine, people get the Platinum Trophy without any problems and yet SCEE QA & Cert says there's something wrong with it. That makes me think that it really only depends on the size of your company and your game. When a working product gets held back because it doesn't work as SCEE wants it to work while Skyrim on the PS3 gets the okay even though it's objectively broken then there's something really shady going on behind the scenes. They knew Skyrim would sell millions and they knew bullying Bethesda would mean real financial loss so they didn't bother.

The gaming press acted just as expected, to be honest. Instead of speaking up for their readers, most sites just ignored the problem. It runs fine on the Xbox 360 and the PC, and since these are the versions most reviewers play there's nothing to worry about. Something Bethesda knew as well. Just give them a working version, let them review that version and everything will be fine – everything was fine until fans and people who have actually paid money for the product spoke their mind.

I think it's ridiculous that they even get credit for fixing the game now. It's just not acceptable that people have to download Patches in order to play a singleplayer game, in order to get a working version of that game. Not every console is connected to the internet and solving a problems for a fraction of your customers is not worth anything if everyone else is stuck with a broken version of that game.

However, you also have to admit that they're pretty smart over at Bethesda. Seeing as there are absolutely no consequences for releasing a broken game, I can't fault them for doing so. They already have your money and that's all they want. They're not artists who want the world to see what they've created, they're about making money and nothing else, and they've succeeded.

Things like that could be prevented in the future. How about the ability to simply get a full refund (+ expenses like gas) if a game is objectively broken? Let's see how broken games would be then.

Can't release a working game? Don't freaking release it. PS3 players would be mad, sure, but now Bethesda is not know as a company that angers PS3 players for not releasing a game on their platform, they're known to be a development studio that doesn't have a problem with charging people full price for a product that doesn't even work. In my book, Bethesda can spin this situation however they want: It's clear that they knew the game was broken and they still released it, and that's shameful for any developer out there.

without a video proof of him actually saying that or something written of official bethesda website it can be just false. like if i write somewhere: Todd Howard on a recent interview said "Screw you PS3 users"

A beautiful post from that NeoGAF thread, truly worth reading, from user "snap0212". It really fits the topic, the situation, everything, and it describes the situation perfectly.

Can you link to this? that is such a good quote.

Hey Gstaff, why don't you sticky http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1348801-bethesda-admit-to-knowing-the-game-was-broken-before-release/page__view__findpost__p__20331900 and make every single one of your developers and marketing team read it.

Well I know that I have an account for each of the major regions (NA, EU, and JP) and then I think two other US ones and one for my wife. So six total. A lot of PS3 users who do utilize PSN/SEN and the store and so on keep an account for each region in order to circumvent dumb region release stuff.

So many people here don't have a clue as to how economics work. Bethesda could NOT of delayed the game for ps3 users. As much as some of you here would hate to admit it, not everyone has had problems, and it would have been an even greater backlash to bethesda if they had delayed the release of the ps3 version.

I urge you all to read the entire article here, as well as the update: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/121/1218881p1.html

It sheds some light on why bethesda didn't delay the game, and assumed that most users would be fine and it would be fixed before anybody even noticed.

And just an fyi, a lot of esteemed developers do this. In the unfortunate case for bethesda, what they thought would be the fix (1.2) wouldn't work until (1.4).