November? really?

[Loony_BoB]

Development hell certainly isn't unique to Japan. Although the national culture that dictates laws and the view of things as a whole is certainly at the extreme end.

However, neither is delaying vacation until after release heading up to deadlines (especially ones that affect mass media and public image on such a global scale - can you imagine if they made the release date early and had to delay it?), and then everyone taking vacation after release as a result. HW was the key release date, not 3.1. They likely missed/delayed their summer holidays. And no, not everyone took time off at once, there were obviously people working on 3.05, 3.07, etc. But there has to be some agreed time to delay holidays (before the biggest release of the year, crunch time) and some agreed time to make up for it (following the biggest release of the year, time to regenerate following the crunch).

This is normal in all things that involve huge public releases and a lot of people working on them - film, TV, video games, etc. Whether or not it's right to do this is up for debate, but it is absolutely normal.

For what it's worth, I can't find an online article, but living in Edinburgh and reading the Metro every day means I did get made aware that Rockstar staff do exactly this following successful releases (or at least they did after one of the GTA games). I dread to think what happens after an unsuccessful release, but I suspect we're more likely to hear about that in the finance pages because, well, that's where you generally hear about large layoffs.