Comments on: The Xbox360 patch system

By: john

john — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 02:34:08 +0000

found problem with GRAW in one of the missions, you lay down and as you move forward you end up flying as if your stuck to a cross.
now thats a massive problem to me as i cant get past this level.

By: Darren

Darren — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 17:55:40 +0000

CoD2 was blatently rushed to cash in on the 360 release hype since there weren’t that many games around. Look at PGR/Kameo and Condemned - all 3 were the best of the launch titles and had no bugs at all - so good development and coding work there.

PGR3 had one known bug to me, but it seems it was a dashboard related lockup bug rather then a pgr3 one. Kameo was bug free, Condemned had one very minor bug which didn’t stop gameplay.

CoD2 was pathetic imo. I never even got to play online because my disc cracked before I had a chance. I just hope all this patch lark doesn’t make the 360 game devs lazy, as is the case for PC games.

By: ReVolt

ReVolt — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 15:59:03 +0000

On the whole I think LIVE is awesome. Its the games that are not optimised/bug free for online play. The require far too much bandwidth.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 15:53:11 +0000

Lets put it this way… If MS was to say you can be a beta tester, but you still have to pay full price for the system since the HW is a final build, would you have still purchased an 360? I would have. It was the same for the original xbox live beta testing only you recieved 3 free months of xbox live.

By: The Xbox 360 patch system - Xbox 360 Blog

The Xbox 360 patch system - Xbox 360 Blog — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 15:49:56 +0000

[…] A great article on XBOXIC about the patch system for the Xbox 360 and they mostly agree with my feelings on the whole thing. Everybody who tried to play Call of Duty 2 online encountered a problem or two, if it’s not the connecting issue, you have terrible lag. You ask yourself how did this happen, don’t they know what testing a game is? Or how to create a proper online system without glitches? If this game was released on a previous generation console, you would be screwed. […]

By: Rival24

Rival24 — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 14:55:19 +0000

@Revolt: You’re lucky, other people did have problems, but they fixed it.

By: ReVolt

ReVolt — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 14:44:13 +0000

Cant say I have had ANY, ever, and I have played it to death….. More likely to be a 360 hardware problem IMHO.

By: Rival24

Rival24 — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:15:54 +0000

@ Revolt: How about the PGR3 lockups then?

By: ReVolt

ReVolt — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:09:00 +0000

Quote: “My conclusion is all of the games on the Xbox360 are very playable, but every big release need fixing.”

PGR3 has no obvious bugs and does not require a patch, so why should the other games!?

Darren - I agree, I did the same move.

By: Steve Davison

Steve Davison — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:08:08 +0000

I think using customers as beta testers is a lousy plan, but you are right especially with regards COD2 on the 360. As for IW releasing a patch a couple of days before GRAW is released that to my mind would be an even bigger issue. To me if there is a patch released just days before GRAW then I would see that as an intentional thing designed to steal GRAW’s thunder. What that says to me is that IW were aware of the problem but didn’t care enough about customers that bought the game to release the patch ASAP, instead they decided that the customers who forked out $60 could just put up with garbage online play until COD2 has some competition. I refuse to believe that if the patch does come out just before GRAW that the reason would be that is when the coders finished the patch!

By: Darren

Darren — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 19:50:38 +0000

You know, the sad thing is as a massive PC gamer, I gave up pc gaming because of poorly coded games. With the advent of HDR hitting pc games I just saw them getting buggier and buggier as well as sloppily coded. So here I am on the 360…irony hurts sometimes.

By: Rival24

Rival24 — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 18:52:35 +0000

@Peewee: That was the initial plan, but i haven’t heard anything about that in a couple of weeks, and there been a few updates. And what about people who don’t have an internet connection? Maybe not much, but still…

By: Peewee

Peewee — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 18:49:04 +0000

And another remark:

Quote:
“But what about all the people that don’t even have their console hooked up to the internet? They are stuck with their buggy games. ”

Patches for games will be made available for download on a normal computer. If you burn it on a DVD/CD, you can update your console. At least, if i’m correct, that was the plan.

On the other hand: Why should you not connect your 360, since it’s free. If you don’t like cables, and lack the money to by a wireless set, plugging in a cable for 1 1/2 minute will also solve your problem.

By: Peewee

Peewee — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 18:43:56 +0000

Nice article. One little remark though.

Quote:
“If this game was released on a previous generation console, you would be screwed. But not with a Xbox360 that allows you to download updates and patches.”

The last generation consoles didn’t have update functionality, except for one: The Xbox

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 17:36:51 +0000

I am also tired of paying $50-60 to be a beta tester.

By: etalien

etalien — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 17:32:48 +0000

I think developers are getting more lame everyday, they don’t test well and this too easy cause they will always be able to update the gamer later.

By: Nino

Nino — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 17:15:57 +0000

Nice article Rival!