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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
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Reply-To: hadeishi@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi)
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center
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	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