It is often mentioned that it is good to ship early. And all the points obviously stand since we have so many working examples. However, my question is: How many products have failed because they were shipped to early? And does this happen often? Is there a way to found the ratio?
Could it be possible that we only notice the examples of success, and fail to recognize the cases where the product failed because it wasn't polished enough?
Is it even possible for a product to fail because it was released to early, or are there other (hidden?) reasons?
It happens with videogames all the time. Developers get pushed to hit an unrealistic ship date, the game gets panned by critics, fans revolt, when 6 more months could have fixed it.
"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever."
-Shigeru Miyamoto
http://www.iwise.com/PW9YU
That said, this attitude is coming from an era when it was difficult to update games after release, so I'm not sure to what extent it still applies.
Yes but if they reduced the feature set and focussed on getting those right (maybe even producing a different game for 1.0) then they wouldn't have a bad game, they'd just have a different game.
It depends if you have an existing customer base. If you are starting out with nothing releasing early is part of your marketing strategy. It turns some of your earliest users into your evangelists and gives you real feedback. If you have a large existing base releasing early needs to be weighed against how your customers perceive the quality of your product.
Comments
It is often mentioned that it is good to ship early. And all the points obviously stand since we have so many working examples. However, my question is: How many products have failed because they were shipped to early? And does this happen often? Is there a way to found the ratio?
Could it be possible that we only notice the examples of success, and fail to recognize the cases where the product failed because it wasn't polished enough?
Is it even possible for a product to fail because it was released to early, or are there other (hidden?) reasons?
It happens with videogames all the time. Developers get pushed to hit an unrealistic ship date, the game gets panned by critics, fans revolt, when 6 more months could have fixed it.
"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever." -Shigeru Miyamoto http://www.iwise.com/PW9YU
That said, this attitude is coming from an era when it was difficult to update games after release, so I'm not sure to what extent it still applies.
when 6 more months could have fixed it.
Only if you have enough cash to pay everybody for 6 more month.
Yes but if they reduced the feature set and focussed on getting those right (maybe even producing a different game for 1.0) then they wouldn't have a bad game, they'd just have a different game.
It depends if you have an existing customer base. If you are starting out with nothing releasing early is part of your marketing strategy. It turns some of your earliest users into your evangelists and gives you real feedback. If you have a large existing base releasing early needs to be weighed against how your customers perceive the quality of your product.