Say what you will about Nintendo, but the overall quality of their games is unquestionably high. While their employees are clearly talented, this is also due to the fact that the company is not afraid to push the release of high profile games back until "they’re done." The tumultuous development of Retro’s seminal Metroid Prime proves that a game can suffer years of delay and endless amounts of reworking to create a better product. There are only a few development houses that do this, but the fact that the number is beginning to grow marks the start of a potentially positive trend.

Half Life 2 was quite possibly the most anticipated PC title ever earlier this decade, so the pressure was heavy for developer Valve to deliver. The game was announced only six months after the original Half Life came out in 1999 but was pushed back multiple times until it finally came out in 2004. "Why spend four years of your life building something that isn’t innovative and is basically pointless," asked Valve co-founder and managing director of game development Gabe Newell. Newell gave no time constraints to the development team so they could make the best product possible. Unfortunately, he reneged on this statement and declared a release date. The original shipping date was supposed to be September 30, 2003, but Newell decided the team needed to flesh the game out further after a less than amazing showing at that year’s E3.

The truth was that development was nowhere near complete by the original date — a fact exposed by "Osama Bin Hacker" months later, but this only served to kick development into high gear. When all was said and done and the game released in late 2004, Half Life 2 won Game of the Year from a majority of publications and media outlets. It is still regarded as one of the best games ever created because the team didn’t tether its release to a definite date and put out a sub-par product; they put the time and manpower necessary into finishing a piece of art.

Half Life 2 isn’t the only high profile game to ever suffer a massive setback – Too Human has been creating press for itself since E3 1999, when it was originally slated as a 5-disc Playstation action-adventure title. It went through a metamorphosis and through three console generations before reaching what looks to be its final form when it’s finally completed... but it’s not quite there yet. Silicon Knights originally planned to release the first part of the trilogy in 2006, but the E3 showing provided nothing but terrible feedback. The game was pushed back and currently has no release date, but other issues have slowed development as well. Silicon Knights is currently in a legal wrangle with Epic Games over complications with the Unreal Engine 3, citing problems with the engine and inadequate tools as reasons things aren’t moving forward as planned. As of press time, the game is still in development and trucking along at whatever pace the current development tools allow, with the Knights presumably improving upon the parts that made initial reception so negative.

Even megapublisher EA is starting to see the benefits in delaying titles. Army of Two was touted by EGM as the game they were most looking forward to in 2007, but the magazine was less than pleased with the final product when the reviewable copies came last fall. Instead of letting the high-profile title face the review and retail world in a poor state and taking a loss on the property, EA pushed the game back to fix the problems. According to Alan Tascan (VP and General Manager of EA Montreal and Army of Two’s Executive Producer), the decision was made "based on the feedback we’ve had internally and externally. We just want to add extra polish to the game -- I think everyone would want that. Our job is to delight the customer and we feel that we need more time to add the polish." The original review scores are unknown but were surely going to harm the game’s reputation. The delay helped increase the quality of the game, and final version received two Bs and a B-; a score which nearly equates to a Silver medal in the magazine.

Sometimes delaying a game isn’t enough to improve it. Daikatana is one of the more tragic examples of this. Ion Storm’s epic and ambitious FPS was shown at E3 1997 on outdated technology and met with a poor response. The game was then moved to the then-state of the art Quake II Engine, and the game was rescheduled until 1998. Inter-company turmoil forced 12 members of the development team out of the door, and the game was forced to miss its Christmas ’98 release as well. The game suffered two more delays before finally releasing in April 2000 and fared poorly with reviewers and at retail, only selling 200,000 copies. The honest truth is a delay is only as good as what the developer is willing to do with the time they set aside. Daikatana switched to the Quake II Engine, but the Unreal Engine and Quake III Engine’s were already out by the time the game released, leaving it behind in a technical sense. This wouldn’t have been a problem if the game played well, but the time wasn’t used to improve the mechanics or level design either. If Ion Storm would have concentrated on improving the quality of the game instead of just trying to push it out the door, things might have turned out differently.

If a developer is doing everything in their power to improve a game, a delay can only mean good things. The increased quality of the game should make it more fun to play and a better game has the potential to sell more copies. Quickly developing a game is a neat trick, but a real developer knows to push their title back when it needs more work. Nobody wants their most anticipated title to become the next Duke Nukem Forever, but remember that developers are likely doing you a favor by delaying it.