EDIT: Several commenter have pointed out that I shouldn't have said 'Get something up and running ASAP', instead it should be the 'minimum value adding set of features at good quality'. It's a bit less pithy though.
How would you rate their chances now that they established themselves as a high-profile failure?
If they had avoided the boastful claims and stuck to low profile releases, they could have gathered useful feedback without the expectation of being a great search engine. Perhaps if they had tried this they actually would have managed to get themselves up to google's level by the time the general public became aware of them.
They have many years and many games under their belts where people pay to beta test their software for them.
I guess one way to push the release date up would be to cut some of the content and pack it in an expansion pack or later update. But the 1.0 version has to be solid, otherwise no one will stick around long enough for the expansion.
so, get your recipe together and bake a cake. maybe to start its just a plain, vanilla, one-layer, only bread cake. you bake it and give it to people to try. if you give it to people to try before you bake it, they're eating raw batter and will get salmonella poisoning and die. if the people like the plain cake, now add some frosting or some berries or another layer. if they don't like it, fix it.
i'm hungry
That's a starting point that can help you learn about what makes your users tick.
For a game, I don't know how this applies. If you know your game isn't fun, I don't think you should release it. If you aren't sure if your game is fun ENOUGH, I think you should.
FWIW, "releasing" isn't all-or-nothing. Start by releasing to 10 friends. Then 100 strangers. Then 1000 strangers.
An even bigger issue is that if you're entering a crowded market, you'll be signaling to your competition what your approach and features will be. If you've developed something that's not magnitude better, you will be copied and if they have resources, they will outmaneuver you.
I'd suggest people read some of the Michael Porter books on this.
We looked at just putting it out but thought we'd try and build up a community first through a beta programme. We've had some good feedback but to be fair our choice of beta users wasn't very good. We could've easily have ditched 25 of our 30 beta users and had the same amount of activity.
What we did get from those remaining 5 was all the delicious feedback we could lay our hands on, some of which we've passed on to slinkset.
I've also written to a number of key bloggers in the niche we're working in to promote the site, hopefully you'll see some noise. Slinkset have also been very supportive.
I think if we'd have just thrown it out then it'd have been stillborn. I think the fundamental thing is to have something functional 'enough' and to have some users when you start, then go for the launch. What do others think?
But every case is a special case. In the case of a game, you might want to get it in front of someone who isn't a developer as early as you can, but that doesn't mean you want to spoil your big marketing splash with a long, slow public beta. This is what roommates are for!
I launched Planaroo.com on June 30, and I wish I had launched it two months earlier. Many of my assumptions about how people would use the site were just plain wrong. I spent a long time working on features that few people use, and not enough time on features that a lot of people use.
If your site involves user-generated content, you have no idea how long it will take to ramp up. If your has lots of text, you just won't know how it will do in search for weeks after launch. Planaroo did very well in Google search almost immediately, but it still doesn't show up in Yahoo Search after 10 weeks.
My advice? Don't let perfect ruin good (see DNF).
No. DAOC had a great launch and continues to be fairly popular. Vanguard had an AWFUL launch and will likely never really recover.
