Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!ll-xn!husc6!husc4!hadeishi From: hadeishi@husc4.HARVARD.EDU (mitsuharu hadeishi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Electronic Arts bashing Message-ID: <2496@husc6.UUCP> Date: Thu, 9-Jul-87 12:23:11 EDT Article-I.D.: husc6.2496 Posted: Thu Jul 9 12:23:11 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jul-87 05:47:44 EDT References:Sender: news@husc6.UUCP Reply-To: hadeishi@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi) Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center Lines: 65 Keywords: Well, I have nothing more to say about CP, but I would like to defend EA some more (I seem to be the only pro-EA guy on the net. Oh well. :-() In article <2381@hoptoad.uucp> farren@hoptoad.UUCP (Mike Farren) writes: >1) By ignoring it. EA has very consistently refused to respond, > publicly and officially, to most, if not all, of the criticisms of > its problems, bugs, or annoyances. As I have mentioned in other messages, this is simply untrue. Reports of bugs, annoyances (particularly with the Deluxe series tools) and so forth were OFFICIALLY responded to. You must realize that it takes some time for these policy decisions to have an effect on products out there. Many people are still bashing EA for products that were released in the first year of the Amiga launch, before these issues could be addressed in actual products. Most of the original complaints (which were addressed to EA on the Well in the form of heavy flames) were addressed very rapidly internally, but it takes months for even a finished product to get out the door (packaging, manuals, etc.). >2) By dealing with it "on the sly" by giving fixed updates of their > products to those who complain about the bugs, while leaving the > rest of the public, especially those who are timid about such things, > unaware that fixes even exist. The fact is EA does provide official upgrades at long intervals. However, because EA is constantly improving and debugging its products, it is rather problematic to constantly be releasing official "upgrades" when such upgrades are available all the time. The question is, should EA just leave the bugs in and wait for an official rev of the product, or should they "quietly" rev the product NOW so "most" users will be spared the bug? The official revs take some time (note how long it was between Manx upgrades!) and the "unofficial" revs are coming all the time from the developers. People in the know can get the upgrades (just like the Manx beta testers) others must wait for the official revs. Perhaps EA should make it more clear when "quiet" upgrades occur, but it is not such an easy matter as you might think. >3) NOT by increasing QA procedures - recent EA products are just as > buggy as the early ones were, and the copy protect schemes just as > drastic. Incorrect. The products recently released that were buggy were the most complex products EA had ever developed, and also under the constraint of an ever-changing OS (from 1.1 to 1.2). They were just not prepared to deal with the bugs that came up. They ARE aware of the problem, however, and have been (since last December) in the process of setting up a full-blown professional QA department. Unfortunately too late for many of last year's products. The basic fact is most of them were microcomputer hackers until the Amiga came along (with some notable exceptions, like Dan Silva, who came from Xerox PARC, and others.) The company was simply not set up to do the kind of exhaustive QA necessary for the product reliability desired. But note that even Microsoft still has problems in this area; it is not because they want to release buggy products, despite your accusations, but because they don't know how to avoid it systematically. However, I was at the meeting in which Trip Hawkins announced the formation of a new, formalized QA department to alleviate these problems. Look for the effects of this to start being evident over the next year or so. -Mitsu