Activision woes could affect Doom 3's release date

[Mogul]

Activision is in the red as far as profits go, for the second year in a row.

They've pushed several titles back, including Doom 3 into the 2005 fiscal year. id Software hasn't commented on this of course, so we'll see what happens...

That, mixed with EB's date now being in JULY - I don't know.

What do you guys think?

[Fredrik]

Who cares about Activision? It's not like id Software wouldn't be able to find a publisher should Activision go bankrupt.

[Mogul]

I don't care anything ABOUT Activision myself.

I just want the game to come out sooner than July. It's horrible!!

But anyway - I don't guess id will say anything about this, but I wish they would comment on the release date now, as everybody has a different idea about it coming out.

[Coopersville]

They've pushed several titles back, including Doom 3 into the 2005 fiscal year.

It better fucking not...

[Darkstalker]

We're already in the 2005 fiscal year.

[Mogul]

Perhaps I should've said *late* into the fiscal year.

[Fredrik]

Darkstalker said:

We're already in the 2005 fiscal year.

Are we? I thought companies could choose where to start their own fiscal years.

[Zoost]

Fredrik said:

Are we? I thought companies could choose where to start their own fiscal years.

That's right. Activision fiscal year 2005 starts April 2004.

See here: http://www.activision.com/en_US/news_article_ir/ir_faqs.html

Q: What is Activision's fiscal year?
A: Activision's fiscal year runs from April 1 - March 31.

mje said:

Perhaps I should've said *late* into the fiscal year.

Perhaps you should back that with a source.

[Mogul]

Perhaps I will.

Ha.

I read it in (cough, cough) GamePro.

[the lone crouton]

It beats me why the big names like ID, Epic, etc. need a publisher at all. How hard is it to arrange some cd duplication and distribution yourself, and save the middleman creaming 50% or whatever of your hard-earned profits? Or distribute via the web - that's what it's there for. Heh, as long as they dont go the Steam route - that sounds truly evil...

[Mogul]

I suppose it's just the sheer demand of the people!

You know, Doom 3 is going to sell TOOOOOOOONS of copies. And it's not like the Doom days either, where they can just ship out the diskettes and everything's cool... they'd have to create the pakaging too.

I don't know anything about the business, but I think the reason they signed on with GT to distribute Doom II was because of the hassle they had distributing Doom...

Sooo I suppose it's really a matter of saving them the trouble.

I suppose the internet could be a viable way of distribution, but you know we'd all need broadband.

The installer would be an EASY 800-1000 mb... no telling how big the Doom 3 folder will be in c:/Program Files.

Heh.

[Arioch]

id is a small company. At last check the total number of people at id was like 25, tops, which is not enough to handle all of or even oversee the marketing process for any game release, even if everyone got involved.

Plus I don't think they themselves have the money to handle the bandwidth requirements of distributing something like Doom 3 online.

[Fredrik]

Arioch said:

Plus I don't think they themselves have the money to handle the bandwidth requirements of distributing something like Doom 3 online.

Bittorrent :P

[Arioch]

Fredrik said:

Bittorrent :P

Irrelevant. They'll be the primary seed, and that's still a shitload of bandwidth they wouldn't necessarily want to pay for.

[999cop]

Actually, personally I am rather more inquisitively interested in what id is still concentrating on...

[the lone crouton]

I know there's no official release date, but the general consensus seems to be March or thereabouts, so the game must be pretty much content-complete now. Just the final polishing to do I'd guess.

[Ichor]

I don't mind any delays, but I just hope that it doesn't end up like Half-Life 2.

[dsm]

the lone crouton said:

I know there's no official release date, but the general consensus seems to be March or thereabouts, so the game must be pretty much content-complete now. Just the final polishing to do I'd guess.

It's essentially been content-complete for quite a while now, so they're definitely in the polishing phase - sadly, you can never really say "just" the polishing phase, because as it so often turns out, the polishing phase requires an assload of time, often ending up being the most time-consuming game development phase of them all.

[Mogul]

I hope you're right crouton.

But the facts about Activision still stand. That does provide evidence that the game is being pushed back by a few months, especially when adding the EB date now being in July.

[Arioch]

mje said:

I hope you're right crouton.

But the facts about Activision still stand. That does provide evidence that the game is being pushed back by a few months, especially when adding the EB date now being in July.

No they don't.

Even if Activision is having a rough year, all the better to try to get id to release it SOONER, so their revenues can get a nice and solid boost.

[Fredrik]

There is no evidence.

[Job]

Ichor said:

I don't mind any delays, but I just hope that it doesn't end up like Half-Life 2.

Uh...what happend to HL2?

[Arioch]

Job said:

Uh...what happend to HL2?

Well, Valve promised it would be out on 9/30 of last year, but they fucking lied.

The full source code plus everything they were working on at the time leaked out to the public sometime in september proving they didn't have nearly as much as they said they did.

Now HL2 doesn't have a release date, despite the fact that it was "bundled" with every new ATI video card. So those people that bought new ATI cards are fucked since there is no actual HL2 and likely won't be for another 6 months to a year, at which time the video cards they bought to get HL2 would cost maybe $50-$150 less.

So yeah, Valve dropped the ball.

[Ichor]

And to top things off this happens.

[Lectrix]

Yeah, its a real shame about Half life 2, the git who did it needs a good kicking... i'd hate that to happen again.

Hopefully ID will just be erasing sloppy coding and sharping up performance issues... maybe to make sure they don't have to keep patching the game like Quake 3.

[Fredrik]

Lectrix said:

Yeah, its a real shame about Half life 2, the git who did it needs a good kicking... i'd hate that to happen again.

Yep, Valve sure could use a good kicking.

[toxicfluff]

I didn't know the entire source code had been leaked, I thought it was just 3 quarters or something.

[Arioch]

ToXiCFLUFF said:

I didn't know the entire source code had been leaked, I thought it was just 3 quarters or something.

It can be compiled. The resulting executable can load the game resources and PLAY it.

[dsm]

Ichor said:

And to top things off this happens.

W...T...F!?

I need some manner of explanation somewhere in this mess. Oh, and where exactly is the part that has anything to do with HL2, Doom 3 or Activision's so-called problems?

[Arioch]

dsm said:

W...T...F!?

I need some manner of explanation somewhere in this mess. Oh, and where exactly is the part that has anything to do with HL2, Doom 3 or Activision's so-called problems?

The comedy gold part.

And Doom 3 is (soy) saucy.