With all the troubling news surrounding the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One launches, I couldn’t help but think of the human toll that these console launches demand. Hundreds of lives are being impacted just to meet lofty promises and hard deadlines.
When I read rumors of issues requiring “months” and not “weeks” to fix, I knew this meant there were engineers and programmers will have to pull many all nighters to get that in order.
I’ve worked my share of overtime for IT projects before but none of it could possibly compare to the launch of these multifaceted consoles. The more features they include in these boxes, the more man power is required behind the scenes.
While much of what I have to say is applicable to any product launch, with forums set ablaze with “ass storms” and “truth facts”, I thought now would be good time to remind everyone that it’s not just PR mouth pieces, black boxes and magical clouds operating in the background. There are many unknown individuals involved here.
So these words are to those of you working in the Microsoft and Sony trenches.
Here’s to those who aren’t officially making six figure salaries but are nearing that amount on their income statements because of overtime.
Here’s to the QA folks who are tempted to fill out bug reports with “Shit’s broken!” when in fact nearly everything is.
Here’s to the network administrators who are praying their servers withstand the launch day storms.
Here’s to the engineers and programmers who are trying to build hardware defining experiences with broken tools and iffy operating systems.
Here’s to the people who are suffering that annoying eye strain from staring at difficult problem for far too long.
Here’s to the folks who are missing Halloween and Thanksgiving with loved ones.
Cheers and thanks for your efforts!
As forum goers bicker over resolution differences, missing features and unstable operating systems, just be aware that there are unnamed folks on both sides working their butts off to make things right.
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