Xbox 360 Game Patching Costs $40,000 [Slashdot]

[DP ServBot]

hypnosec writes "It costs developers a total of $40,000 to release a single patch on Xbox Live, making it a difficult platform for smaller developers to grow on. This revelation was made by Tim Shafer of Double Fine Studios — which recently drew a lot of charitable donations as part of a campaign to create a contemporary point and click game. He went on to say that this is just too high a fee for smaller developers to pay, making it hard for them to do well on the platform. This makes sense, since requiring just one patch could massively cut into the profits for a company."

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[buzz_n64]

How about this. Test the game before you release it. Problem solved.

[Kitsune Sniper]

They do. But anyone who's actually done any game testing knows that people will do something completely unexpected that causes something to break.

The real point is, THEY SHOULDN'T BE FUCKING CHARGING 40 GRAND TO LET THEM FIX A GAME.

[Leo_A]

This is why sometimes PS3 games get a patch while the 360 version doesn't. IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey comes to mind. Got a patch that addressed a lot of issues and added a lot of nice content. But only PS3 owners got their hands on it since Sony doesn't charge you to release a patch while Microsoft does and they couldn't justify the cost.

[Gameguy]

There were no patches on consoles in the cartridge days, if there were any major bugs in the final release you'd fail and go out of business. There really shouldn't need to be any patches if they test the games enough, I know there's plenty of bugs in older games that got removed in later prints but those bugs shouldn't be bad enough to ruin a game.

I can see why Microsoft has this policy with charging for patches, it's supposed to encourage companies to get it right the first time rather than rush a game to market and just fix it later the way PC games have been released for decades.

[The 1 2 P]

I can see why Microsoft has this policy with charging for patches, it's supposed to encourage companies to get it right the first time rather than rush a game to market and just fix it later the way PC games have been released for decades.

Thats a good point but I think what Tim Shafer is mostly referring to is Indie studios. They are the ones that can't afford that $40,000. But the big publishers would have no problems spending it.

[Gamevet]

There were no patches on consoles in the cartridge days, if there were any major bugs in the final release you'd fail and go out of business. There really shouldn't need to be any patches if they test the games enough, I know there's plenty of bugs in older games that got removed in later prints but those bugs shouldn't be bad enough to ruin a game.

I can see why Microsoft has this policy with charging for patches, it's supposed to encourage companies to get it right the first time rather than rush a game to market and just fix it later the way PC games have been released for decades.

A cartridge game is nowhere near the size of a game released on DVD. All of the data involved with a game like Skyrim is probably larger than the entire Genesis library.


Now we know why Gabe was pushing the PS3 as the console to play Portal 2 on.

[sheath]

I read in a developer interview recently, can't remember which one, that game testing these days is spent almost entirely on loading the game and working on preventing errors caused by people powering off randomly or switching memory devices out, and other such non-gameplay related necessities created by today's set-top boxes.

I can't remember the comment exactly, but it was essentially that gameplay testing, tweaking and polishing plays third fiddle to all of the ways users can make the game crash with the hardware alone.

[kupomogli]

Seems like Sony needs a douchebag tactic like this. Instead of losing two billion they probably would have been in the black instead.

[Leo_A]

A cartridge game is nowhere near the size of a game released on DVD. All of the data involved with a game like Skyrim is probably larger than the entire Genesis library.

It's several times larger than the entire Genesis library.

Not hard to understand why, even with the best of intentions and effort, that a modern game on such a scale might need some massaging even after release when they suddenly get thousands of people playing such a huge game.

[Kitsune Sniper]

You guys saying that cart games were debugged better than these new ones need to get real about it. You've played broken assed games, lots of them, over the years. Those games were very rarely fixed.

Microsoft should not be charging such a ludicrous amount of money JUST TO FIX GAMES.

[Gamevet]

It's several times larger than the entire Genesis library.

Not hard to understand why, even with the best of intentions and effort, that a modern game on such a scale might need some massaging even after release when they suddenly get thousands of people playing such a huge game.

Yeah, you could probably fit most of the Sega CD library on there as well.

Back when game testers were looking for bugs in 16-bit cartridge games, it involved doing the same moves over and over again in a small area. Now you have games that take years to develop, and the idea of testing each and every scenario would take years as well, especially in a game with a world larger than a small town.

[Gameguy]

Forget cartridge games then, there were no patches for PS1 or PS2 games(I never heard of PS1 or PS2 games needing patches, besides translation or region patching). Why weren't tons of game breaking glitches left in those? The crappy games seem to have more glitches than the good ones, it's more about the quality of the developers than the medium they're being produced on. PC games pretty much always needed patches even when they came on a few floppy discs and were less than 10MB total in size, the better games only needed patches to correct problems with hardware compatibility rather than problems with the gameplay.

It's really about the quality of the testing, I'm not expecting games to be totally error free but there shouldn't be game breaking glitches left in them. I got stuck in a wall once in The Suffering, I wasn't able to duplicate it though so it wasn't that bad. I went back to the last save and just went past that part. Then there's the port for Broken Sword on the GBA, it was a port and there were multiple game breaking glitches in it. If you saved the game while in certain locations you couldn't continue and you'd have to start the game over from the beginning. It's not like it was a complex game that they made from scratch, it was just poorly ported.

[kedawa]

For $40,000 they'd better let me patch any game I choose!
I'd save up the money just so I could patch Seinfeld characters into Mortal Kombat.

[Ryudo]

How about this. Test the game before you release it. Problem solved.

Pretty much this. My friend at R* says these days many use less Q&A as big budgets and must release soon and these are so expensive they can't afford to keep em longer in development for more polish. Another thing why we have so many glitches is very simple. Graphics. Graphics are so damn expensive.

You have a game like Skyrim huge world wonderful graphics glitchy as hell. Xenoblade huge world low rez graphics yet almost glitch free.

[Tokimemofan]

Forget cartridge games then, there were no patches for PS1 or PS2 games(I never heard of PS1 or PS2 games needing patches, besides translation or region patching). Why weren't tons of game breaking glitches left in those? The crappy games seem to have more glitches than the good ones, it's more about the quality of the developers than the medium they're being produced on. PC games pretty much always needed patches even when they came on a few floppy discs and were less than 10MB total in size, the better games only needed patches to correct problems with hardware compatibility rather than problems with the gameplay.

It's really about the quality of the testing, I'm not expecting games to be totally error free but there shouldn't be game breaking glitches left in them. I got stuck in a wall once in The Suffering, I wasn't able to duplicate it though so it wasn't that bad. I went back to the last save and just went past that part. Then there's the port for Broken Sword on the GBA, it was a port and there were multiple game breaking glitches in it. If you saved the game while in certain locations you couldn't continue and you'd have to start the game over from the beginning. It's not like it was a complex game that they made from scratch, it was just poorly ported.

Final Fantasy XI on PS2, that said it was rare and done only for special games.

[Gamevet]

Final Fantasy XI on PS2, that said it was rare and done only for special games.

Gran Turismo 2 as well. You couldn't 100% the black label version of the game, and It wasn't until the Greatest Hits edition was released, that the game could be played to 100% completion.

[Nature Boy]

You guys saying that cart games were debugged better than these new ones need to get real about it. You've played broken assed games, lots of them, over the years. Those games were very rarely fixed.

Microsoft should not be charging such a ludicrous amount of money JUST TO FIX GAMES.

Seriously, why get bent out of shape about it? If you want to play indie games and expenses keep them away from the console, move on to PC or wherever it is the indies settle.

BTW: We know nothing about the details of the $40,000, including whether or not PSN updates cost the same. Read the quote from the actual article where the $40,000 is brought up:

But the indie community is now moving elsewhere; we’re figuring out how to fund and distribute games ourselves, and we’re getting more control over them. Those systems as great as they are, they’re still closed. You have to jump through a lot of hoops, even for important stuff like patching and supporting your game. Those are things we really want to do, but we can’t do it on these systems. I mean, it costs $40,000 to put up a patch – we can’t afford that! Open systems like Steam, that allow us to set our own prices, that’s where it’s at, and doing it completely alone like Minecraft. That’s where people are going.

Personally, I can't believe we (the gamers) would argue for allowing more patching over forcing companies to release only finished, polished product. We're letting them off the hook, aren't we? Do we really want bigger and more complicated games at the expense of being bug free? I don't. Games getting released before they're finished doesn't help me - it helps devs pay for their product. If the model is so broken that they can't afford to finish what they've started then I argue the model needs to be blown up and re-started.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Seriously, why get bent out of shape about it? If you want to play indie games and expenses keep them away from the console, move on to PC or wherever it is the indies settle.

... are you serious?

Why bother opening up the market to allow independent developers to release their games on your system IF YOU'RE GOING TO CHARGE THEM MORE MONEY THAN THEY'LL EVER MAKE FROM SELLING THE GAME JUST TO FIX A BUG?

This is like Walmart selling a small company's products and then telling them they have to pay 40 grand before they can do anything about it, because their merchandise had a typo or something. It's ridiculous.

Shit happens, no game is ever perfectly coded, but many companies won't even bother fixing their mistakes. And those who want to, never do because of this price tag.

[Emperor Megas]

... are you serious?

Why bother opening up the market to allow independent developers to release their games on your system IF YOU'RE GOING TO CHARGE THEM MORE MONEY THAN THEY'LL EVER MAKE FROM SELLING THE GAME JUST TO FIX A BUG?

This is like Walmart selling a small company's products and then telling them they have to pay 40 grand before they can do anything about it, because their merchandise had a typo or something. It's ridiculous.

Shit happens, no game is ever perfectly coded, but many companies won't even bother fixing their mistakes. And those who want to, never do because of this price tag.

I think that the motivation for developers to release bug light, finished products (a $40,000 fee to patch them) is more of a benefit to the industry than allowing them all to do it for free later is.

It's not unlike SONY's fabled '3D only' policy for the original PlayStation. I thought it was lame as hell then that virtually everyone's games on the platform were 3D, but it really pushed the industry to evolve, and I think console games are better because of it.

Honestly, they probably should just develop for the PC (or keep it simpler and/or tighter on the XBOX360) if the 40 grand patch fee is that much of a problem. The reason I play on consoles is because I want avoid all of that sort of thing which is far more prevalent on the PC than on consoles. 'Release now, path later' is something I want to see less of on consoles, honestly.