History Main / ObviousBeta

* Wikia, a wiki hoster, did the same thing as Moby Games. Not only did they introduce a new page skin that simply does not work the way it is supposed to while also managing to cut the usable page in half (the other half permanently displaying useless information that ''cannot be minimized to give space''), they '''also''' ignored hundreds of thousands of user complaints against the new skin. Worst of all, not only did they force the skin as the default so that not logged in users are forced to use it, they also removed the much more popular and infinitely more functional skin "Monaco".

* Wikia, a wiki hoster, did the same thing as Moby Games. Not only did they introduce a new page skin that simply does not work the way it is supposed to while also managing to cut the usable page in half (the other half permanently displaying useless information that ''cannot be minimized to give space''), they '''also''' ignored hundreds of thousands of user complains against the new skin. Worst of all, not only did they force the skin as the default so that not logged in users are forced to use it, they also removed the much more popular and infinitely more functional skin "Monaco".

** The UsefulNotes/PlayStation Classic, released by Sony in late 2018 in a FollowTheLeader moment to Nintendo's line of classic mini consoles has clear evidence that it was ChristmasRushed. The system uses an off-the-shelf open source emulator ([=PCSX-ReARMed=] to be exact), rather than one of Sony's making, that clearly wasn't configured or optimized correctly for the hardware since many of the games run with worse framerate performance than the originals, something made even worse by the fact that many of the selected games use the slower running PAL versions. The feature set is also very barebones with a very minimalist user interface and a lack of configuration options. Perhaps the most damning of all is a set of debug options that weren't properly DummiedOut and can be accessed by plugging in a USB keyboard and pressing the escape key.

[[caption-width-right:311:[[EightPointEight 10/10 It's Okay]].]]

* ''LightNovel/DoYouLoveYourMomAndHerTwoHitMultiTargetAttacks'' takes place in what is explicitly a closed beta test of a video game. Several of the features are noted as being unfinished. Many of the background characters lack textures and the tutorial area skybox is a grid.

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''I'm The Only One Who Knows This World Is A Game!'' uses this as its primary gag, where the main character is stuck in an RPGMechanicsVerse that happens to have been programmed by a rather incompetent and sadistic development team. Among other things, the difficulty curve is incredibly wonky, weapons are coded with the wrong attributes, animations can be cancelled in a way that completely breaks the game's combat, the AI suffers from ArtificialStupidity, sounds aren't timed correctly with events, and there are countless clumsy subsystems designed to paper over the game's various issues.
[[/folder]]

* Wiki/TVTropes:

* The English dub of ''Anime/TransformersArmada'' and ''Anime/TransformersEnergon'' were rushed due to a combination of having to coincide with the western launch of their respective toyline and Creator/CartoonNetwork broadcasting requirements, leaving both as unedited first drafts.The dub of ''Armada'' suffers from odd, often incoherent, dialogue and an inability to keep the name of secondary characters straight, but was still generally comprehensible. The issues with ''Energon'', however, were more severe: Wiki/{{TF Wiki|DotNet}} specially created "Lost in translation" sections on its pages for ''Energon'''s episodes due to how rushed the dub was, and it's not rare to find instances of [[DubInducedPlotHole muddled plot points]], characters saying the direct opposite of what is happening on the screen, and genuinely nonsensical dialogue (and often, all three in a single episode). Both dubs also had unfinished animation due to airing long before the Japanese broadcast debut of the series. While the differences were minor in most cases, the plot of the ''Energon'' episode "Battle of the Asteroid Belt" [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Battle_of_the_Asteroid_Belt#Lost_in_translation was made incomprehensible]] to English viewers because the spaceship the characters are reacting to the entire episode was not drawn by that point.

** NVIDIA had a rocky start with the [=GeForce=] FX series (named as a nod to [=3dfx=][[note]]famed for Voodoo cards in Windows 9x days, and taken over by Nvidia in 1999/2000, after the later Voodoo cards made them belly up[[/note]]), particularly with the [=GeForce=] 5800 card. It introduced the idea that a video card needed two expansion slots to cool. However, they didn't get the implementation down right as the affectionately named "dust buster" or "leaf blower" had a fan run very loud for marginal gains. It also didn't help the architecture of the FX series was a ChristmasRushed production version of the [=3dfx=] Rampage project, and a core problem that didn't perform so well against [=ATi=]'s Radeon 9000 series.

** NVIDIA had a rocky start with the [=GeForce=] FX series, particularly with the [=GeForce=] 5800 card. It introduced the idea that a video card needed two expansion slots to cool. However, they didn't get the implementation down right as the affectionately named "dust buster" or "leaf blower" had a fan run very loud for marginal gains. It also didn't help the architecture of the FX series was a core problem that didn't perform so well against [=ATi=]'s Radeon 9000 series.

** The most infamous of all was the 737 MAX. This was the first time Boeing shipped a civil plane with the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. The goal of MCAS was to have the MAX have similar flight characteristics of the previous 737 NG, as the engines of the MAX caused it to pitch up in certain manuevers. Rather than do a lengthy redesign of the airplane's structure to accomodate for this, and Boeing's desire to have the plane certified as yet another version of the 737 to reduce training costs, Boeing instead decided to fix this with software using MCAS. The biggest problem was MCAS could override pilot input and it was not obvious it was in control as it directly acted on the flight surfaces (other safety features tended to act on the pilot's controls). For whatever reason, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also allowed Boeing to remove the mentioning of MCAS in flight manuals and did not do a safety analysis since a previous version of MCAS was approved already. In short: Boeing used software to fix a hardware issue in order to save money and the FAA assumed since it was the same thing used on a previous plane Boeing made, it was fine. The result? Two accidents where 346 people died, the 737 MAX grounded for a better part of the year, and a huge credibility loss on FAA's part.

** The most infamous of all was the 737 MAX. This was the first time Boeing shipped a civil plane with the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. The goal of MCAS was to have the MAX have similar flight characteristics of the previous 737 NG, as the engines of the MAX caused it to pitch up in certain manuevers. Rather than do a lengthy redesign of the airplane's structure to accomodate for this, and Boeing's desire to have the plane certified as yet another version of the 737 to reduce training costs, Boeing instead decided to fix this with software using MCAS. The biggest problem was MCAS could override pilot input and it was not obvious it was in control as it directly acted on the flight surfaces (other safety features tended to act on the pilot's controls). For whatever reason, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also allowed Boeing to remove the mentioning of MCAS in flight manuals and did not do a safety analysis since a previous version of MCAS was approved already. In short: Boeing used software to fix a hardware issue in order to save money and the FAA assumed since it was the same thing used on a previous plane Boeing made, it was fine. The result? Two accidents where 346 people died, the 737 MAX groudned for a better part of the year, and a huge credibility loss on FAA's part.

* MS-DOS 4.0 suffered massive problems on its release in 1988, including poor compatibility with older programs and even a number of potential data corruption issues. This one wasn't entirely Microsoft's fault, though -- IBM were the main culprits here, as they forced Microsoft to shoehorn in a number of OS/2 features at the last minute, then insisted on releasing the resulting product before adequate testing could be done. This lead to a subsequent 4.01 release which fixed the major problems. You'd think Microsoft would have learned something from this experience, but unfortunately it was just the beginning.

** Legend has it that the Windows Me launch party coincided with the filing of the 500th urgent bug entered into the tracking system. This Windows version was so buggy that Microsoft basically abandoned it once Windows XP was released barely a year later, with all support for Windows Me being terminated on the same date as Windows 98 (July 11, 2006). Millennium Edition was said to have been ChristmasRushed after a consumer-oriented version of Windows 2000 codenamed "Neptune" was canned [[ExecutiveMeddling for whatever reason]]. If there's any silver lining to it, the NT-derived Windows XP born from the ashes of Neptune and the failure of Me would be fondly remembered as one of if not the best Windows release of all time.
** Windows XP ran into several problems early in its life, which led to it being criticized by tech sites (though not to the same extent as Me). Later on, particularly upon the release of Service Pack 1, it became usable to the point that it had a longer lifespan than previous versions of Windows, and even received [[https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4500705/customer-guidance-for-cve-2019-0708 a critical security update in 2019,]] five years after support for it was ended.

** Windows 10 had Microsoft change to a PerpetualBeta model where they would push updates twice annually, as a public beta of sorts, and then fix any bugs discovered. Even so, the 2018 October update was more of an obvious beta than usual, as it had issues with completely breaking Edge and Windows Store apps, was blocked on many devices due to Intel Driver incompatibilities, and even had the nasty habit of completely wiping your files.[[note]]It was supposed to be a fix for an earlier bug, where moving a folder from one location to another would leave an empty copy of that folder in its original location - the fix was supposed to delete the phantom folders, but somehow targeted the live ones too. The update was soon pulled from Windows Update.[[/note]]
** Windows 11 was also this at launch, though unlike the other Windows examples it was at the very least fairly solid stablity and security wise. However, it launched with a lot of documented bugs, including a fairly nasty (if admittedly quickly patched) one that severely hampered performance on Ryzen [=CPUs=].The UI overhaul that was meant to be the major focus of the OS was still unfinished, with many remnants of older versions of Windows (including some UI elements that date back as far as Windows 3.1 from ''1992'') still being plainly visible. Not to mention that the UI also removed a lot of features, like not being able to see the time on secondary monitors and the inability to drag and drop items onto the taskbar. Android app support, one of the major selling points of the OS, was also missing at launch.

* Developers at the small set of companies who were sold Microsoft's Visual Interdev when it was released were dismayed to see the splash screen labelled 1.0a and a large Alpha after the name. The actual product crashed regularly, lacked key documentation, generated non-functional code, and even had unremoved warnings that it was not for public release.

** Amazon's second generation 4K Fire TV streaming player seemed rushed out to hit the market before the Apple TV 4 and Roku 4. Early customer reviews were scathing, noting that there was no support for surround sound other than for Amazon's own apps, Wifi frequently disconnected, and the remote would lag. Amazon reportedly assigned hundreds of employees to test the unit, and even flew out engineers to test them in customers' homes. Amazon issued software updates over the next few months to fix the issues and give it features that were already present in the older model.

** Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 phone, released in 2016, got infamous for batteries that were [[http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/02/492366052/samsung-recalls-galaxy-note-7-over-exploding-burning-batteries prone to explosion]], forcing a massive recall. It was so sudden and desperate that Samsung even told owners to ''stop charging their phones'' until replacement units could be issued, [[FromBadToWorse and then the replacement batteries turned out to be explosive as well]] becuase the entire battery design was flawed. The phone quickly earned the nickname "the (literal) bomb", Several countries, America included, air travel authorities actually declared it a hazardous material that was banned from flight (moving this phone across the ocean literally had to be done through a hazardous material shipping company), and its entire model's name became so poisonous that effective immediately Samsung permanently retired it (the Note 7 itself was a very good design and was rereleased the following summer with a new, non-exploding battery as the "Samsung Galaxy Note Fan Edition" in certain third-world countries).

** In an effort to combat cheaper alternatives to the Pentium line, Intel created the Celeron line. The first version was basically a Pentium 2 without L2 cache. But excluding any L2 cache caused such poor performance that people immediately wrote the line off. The next version included L2 cache and along with its overclocking capabilities, turned it into a HyperCompetentSidekick.

* Early adopters of the UsefulNotes/Xbox360 found themselves acting as beta testers for the machine's cooling system, then as beta testers for the various fixes for this. Depending on who you believe and which motherboard variants you include [[note]] There are 4 revisions prone to the dreaded red ring of death: The launch Xenon, Zephyr, Falcon and Opus, the last of which was made as emergency replacements for dead "Core" consoles at service centers. [[/note]] the failure rate within the first four revisions was anywhere between 30 and 64% [[note]] with Xenon having nearly ''two third's'' of all manufactured units become defective within a matter of weeks [[/note]] , with many customers requiring multiple replacements. These issues had numerous causes from defective soldering joints on the GPU cracking from the high amounts of heat and potentially ''desolder'' themselves from the motherboard or the X-Clamps keeping the pressure on the chip to come loose. And some units shipped with defective GPU's out the gate. These issues were only finally fixed with the release of the "Jasper" and "Kronos" revisions of the original model and the complete slim redesign ''five years'' after the original launch. This would be slightly reversed with the final "Corona" and "Winchester" board revisions [[note]] Used in the later Slim and "E" Series [[/note]] which would start exhibiting defective NAND memory chips or XCGPU die's. It was later revealed that this was nothing compared to the assembly line failure rate, which was astronomically higher, to the point where the ones that were sold were basically the only ones that worked at all. Furthermore, this wasn't merely a matter of poor internal design. The several companies that they contracted out production to had used below substandard parts to keep their costs down, leaving Microsoft with hundreds of thousands of worthless consoles at launch.

** Recreating every NPC in the ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms Campaign Setting'' from scratch would have taken a lot of time, so most [=NPCs=] were run through a fairly basic conversion guide and then shipped out the door. Of course, given that AD&D and 3rd Edition have very different mechanics, this led to a lot of [=NPCs=] having [[MasterOfNone bizarre builds]], too-high stats, and often vestigial abilities. For instance, Elminister retains his immunity to Time Stop, even though the 3rd Edition Time Stop is a burst of SuperSpeed and not anything that affects other individuals, and Drizzt has taken five levels of Ranger despite the fact that he gets almost nothing out of them (unless he went eleven levels before taking two-weapon fighting).

* [[invoked]]''Film/MonsterAGoGo'' was this. Writer/producer Creator/HerschellGordonLewis wanted a cheap movie to round out a double feature he was producing, so he bought a half finished film reel out of DevelopmentHell, filmed a couple of extra scenes, and called it a day. How bad is it? Well, the original had run out of money just before they could shoot the climax, and Lewis was too cheap to shoot one himself, so instead he just gave it a {{Mind Screw}}y NothingIsScarier [[NoEnding Non-Ending]] with the narrator literally cutting in to say that actually the entire movie was a lie and there was no monster. Lewis actually refused to put his name on it, instead crediting himself as [[AlanSmithee Sheldon S. Seymour]] (and then also changed his production designer credit... to [[SdrawkcabName Seymour S. Sheldon]]). When people found out he made it anyway he claimed [[ParodyRetcon the movie was meant to be a satire]].

** The June 2018 redesign was released in a similarly half-functional state. Issues included but were not limited to spoiler-tagged text being simply underlined as opposed to blocked-out, edits not being registered, pages randomly getting locked, and users finding themselves randomly logged into other accounts.

** Any streaming service that's not Creator/{{Netflix}} tends to fall over under heavy load -- considering that Netflix literally accounts for 30% of the entire Internet's traffic, it goes without saying that capacity planning for streaming services is not an easy task.

* In episode 5 of ''LightNovel/{{Haganai}}'', the characters play an MMO game using virtual reality headsets. The game is in a playable state, but the first enemies they encounter haven't even been programmed with attacks yet, nor does the main character Kodaka have any abilities to use despite being a "wizard". There are also balancing issues as the boss they fight is a bit too tough, though to be fair their healer was taking a nap (since she's only a ten-year-old) and they weren't coordinating their moves very well either.

** Based on the concerns from his employees that Antwan completely dismisses, ''Free City 2'' sounds like it's far from playable even just days away from launch. [[spoiler:The poor reception it receives at the end of the movie pretty much kills Antwan's career as a game developer.]]
** Antwan also, as a last minute resort to stop Guy, orders them to [[spoiler:upload DUDE, which seems to be a buffed-up version of Guy planned as an AscendedMeme for ''Free City 2'']]. Most of his dialogue consists of placeholders and his AI is roughly equivalent to a child.

* On ''Series/TheMuppetShow'', pretty much any invention highlighted on a Muppet Labs sketch.

** IA-64, released in 2001, was meant to be the 64-bit successor to the [=x86=] architecture. While the initial implementation in Itanium did have [=x86=] backwards compatibility, it was through software emulation that couldn't manage to outperform the then 11 year old 80486. Even running its native IA-64 mode wasn't that much more competitive than the alternatives. Though it did manage to carve out a niche given that Intel not only made a second generation, but it continued to receive incremental improvements until 2017.

** [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] with the [=GeForce GTX 750 Ti=], which is based on NVIDIA's Maxwell architecture. Rather than wait for the 22 nm process to be refined for full scale production, NVIDIA built the GPU using the tried and true 28 nm process. This way, any design issues either on the hardware or software side can be stamped out. Improvements were made, sans the move to 22 nm due to manufacturing issues, in the [=GeForce=] 900 series under the Maxwell 2 moniker.

* The 4th-generation Apple TV and its new operating system, tvOS, lacked several capabilities of previous models. It didn't work with Apple's own Remote app, nor could it work with Bluetooth keyboards or iOS devices to enter text. There was no Podcast app, which was weird since virtually every Internet-connected Apple product since 2007 could natively play Podcasts, and Apple's commercials and in-store demo loops clearly showed one on the home screen. Siri worked for finding movies and TV shows, but not for music. Many users also weren't pleased Apple inverted the interface to black text on a light grey background with no dark mode option, a feature of older models and ''every other streaming player and TV interface'', given that [=TVs=] are more often used in darkened rooms. Many of these shortcomings were fixed in the following months.

* [[http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/ iOS 6 Maps]] was Apple's attempt to create a native navigation app for [=iOS=] 6, replacing the venerable Google Maps. They created it and released it four months ahead of schedule, surprising even Google in the process. But the app didn't work like it should have: entire ''cities'' were renamed, called hospitals, or covered by clouds in satellite view, some places were flat-out missing (replaced with blocks of solid color), and the maps contained some strange, incredibly tall mountains, among other nonsensical and inaccurate geography. Its route planning was sketchy at best (sometimes advising users to drive on train tracks and water), it didn't have public transit routes, and it had minimal coverage outside the U.S. It was clearly rushed into production without a second look. Although it has since been improved tremendously, it remains one of Apple's most visible failures. Google showed how it should be done by making a freely downloadable app of its own for [=iOS=] 6 in response; iPhone users showed companies what they wanted by putting off updating their phones to give Google time to make it.

* It's a common sentiment among Apple loyalists that often the first iteration of a product, or the first major redesign, is somewhat of a public beta, and most of the bugs are ironed out for the next minor revision or x.1 release. Examples include the antenna issues of the iPhone 4, fixed for the 4S, the infamous butterfly keyboards that were prone to failure, which, in one instance, had a recall program issued on launch day and was eventually fixed by bringing back the old keyboard, and the first generation Apple Watch, dubbed the "Series 0", which was slow and clunky, before getting replaced by the much better Series 1.

* ''Film/TheSnowman2017'' infamously suffered from [[TroubledProduction a production so truncated and mishandled]] that by director Creator/TomasAlfredson's admission, 10-15% of the script wasn't shot by the time the film reached post-production. The absence of several scenes required further alteration of the scenes that ''were'' shot (usually through [[LoopingLines ADR]] to attempt smoothing over several plot transitions), and the haphazard reassembly really shows, with major plot elements and secondary characters being introduced [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse before never appearing again]], and many scenes of character (inter)action appearing without any established context. Further issues like jarring momentary edits and a distinct lack of visual processing (the trailer features a ColorWash not at all present in the final product, which is drab and washed-out to the point of resembling raw camera footage) contribute to the impression of a film that's very visibly incomplete.

* ''Film/TheSnowman2017'' infamously suffered from [[TroubledProduction a production so truncated and mishandled]] that by director Creator/TomasAlfredson's admission, 10-15% of the script wasn't shot by the time the film reached post-production. The absence of several scenes required further alteration of the scenes that ''were'' shot (usually through [[LoopingLines ADR]] to attempt smoothing over several plot transitions), and the haphazard reassembly really shows, with major plot elements and secondary characters being introduced [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse before never appearing again]], and many scenes of character (inter)action appearing without any established context. Further issues like jarring momentary edits and a distinct lack of visual processing (the trailer features a ColorWash not at all present in the final product) contribute to the impression of a film that's very visibly incomplete.

* ''Film/TheSnowman2017'' infamously suffered from [[TroubledProduction a production so truncated and mishandled]] that by director Creator/TomasAlfredson's admission, 10-15% of the script simply wasn't shot by the time the film reached the editing booth. The absence of several scenes required further alteration of the scenes that ''were'' shot (usually through [[LoopingLines ADR]] to attempt smoothing over several plot transitions), and the haphazard reassembly really shows, with major plot elements and secondary characters being introduced [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse before never appearing again]], and character actions being presented without context, seeming jarring and random. Further issues like jarring momentary edits and a distinct lack of visual processing (the trailer features a ColorWash not at all present in the final product) contribute to the impression of a film that's very visibly incomplete.

* Averted with the game of {{UsefulNotes/Basketball}}. Modern basketball is very different from the game Dr. James Naismith originally created, and he changed many of the original rules himself while testing the game out with his gym class students. The game became more playable when Dr. Naismith and his students worked out a lot of the initial problems, and the rest is history.

* ''I'm The Only One Who Knows This World Is A Game!'' uses this as its primary gag, where the main character is stuck in an RPGMechanicsVerse that happens to have been programmed by a rather incompetent and sadistic development team. Among other things, the difficulty curve is incredibly wonky, weapons are coded with the wrong attributes, animations can be cancelled in a way that completely breaks the game's combat, sounds aren't timed correctly with events, and there are countless clumsy subsystems designed to paper over the game's various issues.

** Samsung eventually released a fix to make the performance decent- but only for the 840 EVO. The 840 and PM 851 never received such a fix, and as a result are often found at bargain bins.

** Even the signed Academy Edition backup is in itself an Obvious Beta based on what some users mentioned, as for some reason the firmware update utility fails to install newer OTA packages even if the backup appears untouched. It may be due to the signing keys used or the way the ROM is compressed, though the author is looking into a fix.