Remember the days when games went gold before release?

[thm1223]

Remember how games about two weeks before their release date used to go gold? I assume this is no longer the case because of digital distribution. If I'm not mistaken, going gold meant that the final version had been sent to factories for the mass production of retail copies.

Thus is the term "going gold" effectively obsolete in today's gaming market?

 

[mizzou]

Remember how games about two weeks before their release date used to go gold? I assume this is no longer the case because of digital distribution. If I'm not mistaken, going gold meant that the final version had been sent to factories for the mass production of retail copies.

Thus is the term "going gold" effectively obsolete in today's gaming market?

not really, gold just means official release date of the product.

many games still go gold, but usually it's in the console market.

PC gaming doesn't really mention it for a few reasons,
one is digital distribution, but even them sometimes it says "gold"

two, gold sometimes references a complete package of a game with extra DLC or expansion packs

three, many games now aren't being released finished, http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2337629

 

[clok1966]

I am glad they can update and fix, but it think its just made publishers friggin stupid.. push half done stuff out so you can patch...that is, if it sells, if it don't (often because its a horrible mess) they wont support past a quick patch.

the old days GOLD meant playable to the end.. there where mistakes.. but few. StoneKeep (had a bad one), and I remember one in .. dang.. some old RPG a riddle, and the correct answer was never accepted (or was that stonekeep?)

digital is great, but with all easy things the LAZY comes out.. and greed. When you shipped a boxed copy with no way of updates, it had to be right, now.. they dont seem to care, yes, some tweeks are just good stuff. But so many fix game breaking bugs. I cant remember the last game i bought for a console that didn't have an UPDATE the day i put it in.. lazy...

 

[McWatt]

If I'm not mistaken, going gold meant that the final version had been sent to factories for the mass production of retail copies.

You are not mistaken.

I think that digital distribution and the assumption that customers can always install a day 1 patch have reduced the importance of the term in the minds of developers.

 

[Dankk]

Thus is the term "going gold" effectively obsolete in today's gaming market?

No. "Going gold" is still a current and relevant term, especially in the console market. (Although I guess digital distribution is a little different.)

 

[Aikouka]

While not everything has to "go gold" to see a release, it's still prevalent in any PC game that sees a retail release.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Yea gold exists, just the..."gold standard" has fallen.

 

[runzwithsizorz]

:thumbsup:

Yea gold exists, just the..."gold standard" has fallen.

Right on! With a few exceptions i.e. CD Projekt Red.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I think going gold was basically the master image for the game was finished and sent to the factories to be pressed, it was essentially the final game that appears on the discs.

It's still a relevant term, although the lines of "released" are becoming blurred as we have more and more pre-alphas, alphas, betas etc...I assume that digital distribution has something similar where a final image is uploaded onto the servers as the master image to push out to gamers, it's just that image can be updated, whereas with a CD obviously it can't it can only be patched.