We bought a Sony World Tour game for someone this Christmas.  This is one of the most popular games this past season.  Typical out of stock problems for a popular seasonal item.

It never worked.  Tried replacing various components about 6 times.  Finally returned the whole thing to the store.

At the store one of the clerks mentioned, “Oh, yeah.  Those don’t work a lot.  Be thankful you didn’t buy an XBOX.”

This prompted my curiosity, “What do you mean?”

The clerk said, “Oh, the XBOX’s fail about 75% of the time”.

Being in software I was a little flabbergasted.  “How can that be?  These are extremely popular items; that YOU sell.”

“I just work here.”  Realized he had revealed too much and proceeded to hush up for the rest of the transaction.

Being in commercial software I have lived through the horrors of bugs in software that persist well past the FCS date.  Some of these can be fatal, most are doggedly consistent errors in logic that just mess things up.

Maybe I am being stuck up, but the game software DOES NOT START!  This is not even close to an FCS quality level.

Do game software writers not work in the same realm as the rest of their brethren?  Are they immune from the QA/QC police?  Management/marketing breathing over your shoulders about typos and nits they found over the weekend?  Heaven forbid your application does not start, boot, begin correctly for them in whatever strange configuration they manage in their household.

The more you think you understand something the less you actually know.