Tecmo Upgrades Ninja Gaiden Via Xbox Live

joinder writes "IGN is reporting at that Tecmo will be releasing an freely downloadable upgrade of Ninja Gaiden via Xbox Live, including 'improved AI' and 'full 360 degree control of the [in-game] camera', as well as new enemies, bosses, and weapons. As far as I know, this is the first time such wholesale gameplay and content changes have been made on a console title - fortunately, the Ninja Gaiden upgrade is free if you have Xbox Live. Could this be a symbol of a positive trend to come, or a negative one that would equate to the bugfix/patch crazy world of the PC gaming world?"

Comments

Re:Can Thief do the same thing, then?

[Gaijin42]

Microsoft does not allow patches for non xbox-live games. It has nothing to do with what type of content the update is.

Ninja Gaiden has an XBox Live portion already (head to head battles) even tho nobody uses it. That is the loophole that gets them their update.

If Thief had a "vs" mode, or a level download feature, then they could fix the difficulty bug, even if nothing about "live" was modified.

Re:Isn't this a change in MS' patch policy?

[Niobium-41]

Actually.. since this patch is being used in Phase 2 of the MasterNinja Tournament. It directly affects online play for the people in the tournament.

It also just happens to be available to people not participating in the tournament.