A Patch? For Console Games?

KungPaoChicken · Post by **KungPaoChicken** » Thu Jan 16, 2003 1:04 am

For the unenlightened, way back in the days when XBOX was barely announced, there was already outcry over the hard drive. One specific reason was that developers would attempt to use the hard drive for patches, allowing them to skim on development just so to push a product out earlier, and letting later patches fix whatever they had initially missed. Which in turn, gives us an inferior end product that has major bugs and costs $50.

And back in the day, we were reassured that this was not the way; that Microsoft is "definitely rigid", and that they do "not looking at the hard drive as some overall patching mechanism." (http://xbox.ign.com/articles/078/078800p1.html)

But, now, it has happened. Unreal Championship is receiving a patch; as announced on Infogames' forum: http://www.ina-community.com/forums/sho ... did=250597

One of the fixes? Just read it for yourself:

"I will list the things that we are looking at right now.

- Exploit: Stats. Yes we know that it was a flimsy solution and that people would of course take advantage of it. Time constraints worked against us here.
With the upcoming patch, first time players against bots will give get a certain amount of points (fairly low). As your skill improves bots will start to give you less and less points. See it as you're leveling up in the game. So at first the bots will give you points so that you're at least ranked enough that you don't have to be ashamed of your skills, later on this will become a very very small amount. At this point you can play all you want against bots instead of real players in an attempt to get your rank higher but that will be an utter waste of time.

- Exploit: Balancing of teams. Again coming from the PC where split screen does not exist which means this code had to be written from scratch over top of the Unreal code, these issues of teams not being balanced in certain situations fell in-between the cracks. This is being worked on as we speak. This has proven to be somewhat hairy but we are cutting it neatly for you guys."

This is coming from a developer for the XBOX platform, which Microsoft oversees, who (Microsoft) is "rigid" about no patches for games.

Of course, to Infogames' credit, they did do at least some bug testing: "you have no idea how long we tried getting out of maps in our attempt to close all holes."

But still, the fact of the matter remains that there exists a patch for games, which by a Microsoft executive's word isnt supposed to exist. Which could potentially lead to developers pumping out and rushing games solely to take advantage of certain selling seasons.

And let's not even get into the problem of distribution and paying to get those patches.

CaTaClYsM · Post by **CaTaClYsM** » Thu Jan 16, 2003 1:11 am

well my fear became true, I will now not buy the X box, I guess this means when the time comes for me to get a next gen system it wil be the gamecube.

CaTaClYsM · Post by **CaTaClYsM** » Thu Jan 16, 2003 1:14 am

but software and firmware are updatable, HARDWARE however isn't and when you look at the PS2, the Xbox and that evil harddrive are paled in comarison the the crap that is the PS2, the LACK of anialiasing, the sony propoganda which said the PS2 could do ELEVEN TIMES what it actually could. and the LACK of anti-aliasing in hte hardware. I mean, X box was made by satan himself, but the PS2 must have been made by satans lawyers and publicists. In conclusion, the x box still isn't as bad as the PS2.

El Banana · Post by **El Banana** » Thu Jan 16, 2003 1:14 am

The patches should be free if you own the game...(not like you can precisely rip those...)

But then again...that might turn out to be wishful idealism from my part....

KungPaoChicken · Post by **KungPaoChicken** » Thu Jan 16, 2003 1:19 am

Extra DOA3 costumes should have been free. But they only come with a copy of OXM that costs $5.

I suspect that is the same distribution method for this patch.

Mr Pilkington · Post by **Mr Pilkington** » Thu Jan 16, 2003 2:05 am

KungPaoChicken wrote:Extra DOA3 costumes should have been free. But they only come with a copy of OXM that costs $5.

I suspect that is the same distribution method for this patch.

Hence my theory: Microsoft is the devil.

Show you support of my thoery, buy a Mac!

CaTaClYsM · Post by **CaTaClYsM** » Thu Jan 16, 2003 2:09 am

Nah, I;ll go linux, and good old DOS. hell as a matter of fact, I think I'll program a game for DOS just for shits and giggles.