Originally Posted by
Saolite
Once upon a time, a beta was an actual beta. People knew that it was a very unfinished, rough product of what was to come. It was meant for testing, hammering out bugs, stress testing, and ensuring all that the features ( that were enabled ) functioned properly.
In the past 3 years, perhaps a little longer, the rise of the " Sneak Peak " has been what Beta's have become. It's no longer about helping a game development, but Beta has become a thing for people to try the game out before purchasing it. There are numerous reviewers, both professional and not, who join a game while in Beta and either flame it to hell or praise it beyond belief, yet when the actual game comes out, they find something different ( changed features, bugs, etc ) and are somehow surprised by this.
Obviously, this came to developers attention. They had to practically fully complete the game just to release in Beta so that reviewers wouldn't flame the crap out of it and expect some dazzling finished product, and because of the way things are these days, developers can't spend years in development, can't Beta a product properly because of it ( except in Alpha ), and end up pushing out either 1) with cut features, 2) unfinished, 3) buggy. Only huge companies such as Blizzard or Nexon or SOE can spend years in development on a single game and get through all that within a margin of error ( even if some of these companies still make fail games. There will be no names said. )
I am not saying this is the case with Xsyon specifically, but this is an unfortunate thing that is happening in the gaming industry right now.
So, to answer your question? No. Games cannot survive a bad launch anymore.
Look at Age of Conan. It was destroyed by its launch, even if it's a solid game now. Numerous other MMO's fall into that category. Will Xsyon fall into the same category? Don't know. It was a niche game from the get-go, so it didn't have mass market appeal such as Rift or World of Warcraft. All of us can admit to at least that.
So, will it survive? Hopefully.