Raidergoo,
I understand what you are saying, and you are very much seeing it from a developer's perspective. While you have been looking at the experience of the developer, I have been talking about the experience of the consumer, from a consumer's perspective.
Our arguments do not differ greatly - I think it is a matter of extent. To what extent is one willing to tolerate flaws and bugs in a newly released game. Ootp customers have always been willing to tolerate them in the past, though I feel that the extent of the quantity of bugs is the difference in ootp2006, and is what has caused this differed response from previous versions. The heart of the matter is playability - and unlike previous versions, ootp2006 did not pass the test.
My biggest point is that this is not the first time that SI Games has failed this test. It happened repeatedly with CM/FM, and was exasperating for a lot of people - and managed to turn many off to their product.
FM06 is the most playable of SI's recent releases, which along with the fact that ootp has a relatively mild history of bugs, gave me (retrospectively, false) hope I would not have to experience that again. I do not have enough experience with games to know how SI's policies relate to the industry norm, though I gather that if they were indeed better than the industry norm then we would not have the degree of discontent that this board has recently seen. Ultimately, the industry norm is to release a playable game, unlike SI did with ootp2006. Admittedly, there is a probable reality that the type of people who play games such as FM and ootp are likely brighter than the average bear and more able to discover discrepancies in gameplay - but still, an unplayable game is exactly that.
The biggest question is: what can SI do differently to ensure that this type of response does not happen next year for ootp2007?
rwd59 - glad you understand what I'm talking about
