Why do Games Keep Getting Delayed? Head of Xbox Game Studios Explains
Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty explained the reason for the current wave of delays in the industry during a panel at PAX West. On the occasion, the developer expressed his wish to harness artificial intelligence to test games.
During PAX West 2022, held this past weekend in Seattle, attendees had the opportunity to ask questions of Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty.
The Microsoft representative was asked, among other things, whether the COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest reason for the large number of delays in AAA game releases in recent years. Booty agreed that the coronavirus played a key role, but in his opinion, it is not the only one.
Times are changing
Among the reasons cited by the developer were factors such as the difficulty of adapting to the new generation of consoles, but also, and more importantly, the increasing need for cooperation between studios in the development of major titles (via VGC).
“How we make games is evolving. The idea of a single team under one roof really doesn’t happen that often anymore. I’ll use an example – our Perfect Dark team down in Santa Monica, The Initiative.
So, we just did this big partnership with Crystal Dynamics, and I read online, ‘oh, this must mean there’s a problem or something’ – it’s quite the opposite, right?
You’ve got this veteran team at Crystal Dynamics, a big AAA team with over 100 people that becomes available. Of course we want to work with them, particularly if they’ve made a game like that before. [...]
That, though, also adds some complexity where if one of those studios has problems it then impacts the schedule.
So the days are gone when you can sort of go ‘everybody, round up the team in the cafeteria, I want to tell everybody to work harder this Wednesday.’ That’s long gone, it’s gotten a lot more complicated than that," Matt Booty said during the panel.
Testers of the future
In addition, Booty acknowledged during the panel that with the current level of complexity, these games are becoming increasingly error-prone. There are so many of them that testers often simply can't cope with catching all the imperfections.
The head of Xbox Game Studios admitted that, according to him the best solution would be to replace human testers with artificial intelligence ..
Booty admitted that he had asked AI researchers at Microsoft to develop algorithms that could be more effective than humans in detecting defects.
In a situation where after adding every last element, the game must be checked from all angles to make sure it doesn't stop working, testing by AI seems to make a lot of sense. However, this is a melody of the future for now.
Let's wish that the delays Matt Booty spoke of will be a thing of the past as quickly as his dream of artificial intelligence testing games will come true.
