14 DAY TRIAL // This period is one of the most important of the year in terms of gaming, as Sony launched its PlayStation 4 in North America, while Microsoft is getting ready to deploy the Xbox One next week.
Meanwhile, plenty of big games, like Call of Duty: Ghosts or Battlefield 4, are selling a lot of units worldwide across multiple platforms.
Unfortunately for gamers, almost all these products have various problems and issues.
Broken PS4 units have already been shipped to consumers ahead of launch, while firmware 1.50 is apparently either bricking consoles or causing games to crash.
Battlefield 4, meanwhile, has plenty of glitches and problems across all platforms and, even if it's just received a massive 1GB patch on the PC platform, fans are still reporting problems, crashes, and bugs.
Call of Duty: Ghosts also encountered quite a few problems and had some pretty big missing features, like the Search & Destroy game mode that's just been added to the multiplayer playlist.
Microsoft's Xbox One has yet to appear, but it's almost certain that some problems will arise, either hardware-related (hopefully no Red Ring of Death) or regarding software, relating to its interface or the Xbox Live online service.
All these problems, while justifiable concerning the scope of the next-gen consoles and their games, are partly to blame on the rush to get products on the market ahead of the winter holiday season.
Gamers in particular have grown accustomed to the rush of new releases in October and November, as many big developers and publishers want their titles to be on store shelves when people are doing their holiday shopping.
Console makers like Sony and Microsoft are doing the same with the PS4 and Xbox One, as missing out on this period would mean catastrophic financial results.
As such, many companies are willing to launch an incomplete or bug-filled product just to get it on store shelves and then worry about solving the problems.