Did Bioware Rushed the release date for Andromeda ??'?

I guess it is my mentality when looking at Visceral and BioWare Montreal, but aside from closing the buildings where they didn't have games in active development what did they really do? Yes they retired the studio name, but what else happened? For I don't hear of massive layoffs when they closed the studios.

In short absolutely rushed. An unfinished game is an unfinished game regardless of the time put into it.

What's frustrating about it is 5 years is more time than most other developers get and they still didn't make use of it, furthermore they even got the blessing from EA to delay the game, something other groups under EA would love. I still refuse to see EA as the problem here too. They treat Bioware probably with the most respect compared to their other studios, that's including DiCE who is their money maker in the fps genre and heading a trend of going old school with them. DiCE doesn't get delays, and they rarely get extra years to work on their games. Here's a comparison I'd like to make on Andromeda and battlefield 4:

•both launched with a shitty reception
•both were bug heavy games
•both also underwent the work to patch up as much as possible

The one difference is battlefield 4 got the chance to continue on once fixed and Andromeda didn't. so why is that? Well for 1 the fps market is much much bigger than anything Bioware has ever been apart of so there's more of a chance to win a good portion of that playerbase back. I've said it various times, as great as Bioware can be, they're a niche group making games that fit a small market. So get a bad reception in that small market and it's arguably better to cut ties and take the loss rather than putting more resources into it and potentially lose even more. That's my own speculation on Andromeda not doing post launch content. It wouldn't be an issue if DLC/expansions weren't so common, I can't even think of a recent game (especially in the AAA level) that hasn't got DLC, furthermore there has been other struggling games that still put out expansions.

Is "rushed" actually the right word for this concept? I suppose it could be, but then we need a different word or phrase to describe situations where sufficient time and/or resources weren't ever assigned to the project.

yeah I think it'll make for an excellent MMO style game but personally I don't do MMO's so won't be looking at it personally. I'm more interested in DA4.

oh...kay

What's the difference between being owned by one of those and being owned by the other?

It wasn't rushed. They had five years to make the game, they just wasted a lot of that time.

It's like you not being able to decide what to write your school paper on, and then when you finally decide, the paper is due the next day.

People keep trying to blame EA for the debacle that was the production of this game, but management at Bioware is to blame for taking so long to decide on a direction for the game. EA even pushed the release back once, but eventually you just have to put it out from a cost standpoint. They probably paid for marketing and other things in advance of the release date, and they would have had to keep paying developers if they moved the release out again.

That's all in the what if category. They may have never produced it at all, given it a different direction, released it sooner or later, handled it in Edmonton rather than Montreal. Montreal may not have existed at all, if they were still independent.

Fact is, Bioware is a division of EA. A lot of people making up the old company have already left and Bioware is mainly a label to be slapped over whatever EA decides to carry that label.

I don't think Andromeda was rushed......it's just an example of inept management and poor process.

The whole point of pre-production is to create a blue print.....story,characters,game-play mechanics,tech issue's etc should all be finished and finalized at the end of this process.

The next stage is production,which is the process of creating exactly what's on the blueprint (created during pre-production).The purpose of management during this phase is to keep everyone focused and on-track with the development of what's on the blue print.

If Andromeda did not have a solid pre-production foundation,then the game should never have gone into development........so my own conclusion is simple,only management had the power to make the call to skip key aspects of pre-production and green light Andromeda's aimless development.

The sad reality is that a fantastic franchise like Mass Effect was put in the hands of people who genuinely didn't know what the hell they were doing and the process that would have highlighted the FACT was ignored.......it's pretty disgraceful and explains why so many people left Bioware during Andromeda's development,as they all knew that Andromeda was destined to fail.

I think the issue is that they rushed ahead the game development without having an actual story for what the game was supposed to be. That's why Andromeda's narrative feels occasionally like it's still only at the bullet-point stage and some ideas are not fully realised or properly executed.

For example, the Hyperion heads to the Nexus because it was damaged by the Scourge and leaking power. Only for us to then learn that the Nexus also has power issues (they can barely keep the lights on). But this dire circumstance immediately gets dropped, as the characters hook the Hyperion's reactor into the Nexus and voila, now everything works? They resolved something that should have been a main plot point (Ryder needs to scout for salvage/tech to help fix our power issues) in the first two hours of the game and off-screen!

Also we could have had the ending of the game and final showdown with the Archon on the Remnant city. They could have saved the reveal that the City wasn't Meridian and left Ryder's quest to find it for a future game. That plot hook alone could fill a sequel and see Ryder exploring parts of the cluster where the Scourge is so dense and dangerous that even the Kett avoid it.

Ending the first game with a technologically advanced Dyson Shell that renders most of our survival problems completely meaningless? Imagine how we'd have felt if Shepard had just found the Crucible laying around and used it to wipe out the Reapers in ME1?

It depends on what "acting like old Bioware" means. Going to an action game, ruining a game with forced MP, and lots of DLC are Bio traditions too.

The current Andromeda was rushed, but 3.5 years were wasted on a NMS kind of game so Bioware dug themselves into a hole, which they had no choice but to rush the game.