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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?"
The reason why console games are so vigourously play tested is because once you make a playable disc or cartridge on a system, there's no such thing as a do over.
This will probably only encourage laziness on the part of some x-box designers.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
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.
If the network were free, I'd have less of a problem with this. But XBL isn't free.
People without paid network access have no means of obtaining these patches. Tecmo sure ain't shipping patch CDs. Even Microsoft themselves provide multiple distribution formats for their countless Windows and Office patches, but not here. And all of a sudden, Xbox owners without XBL are second-class citizens who are missing out on more than just network access by foregoing the monthly MS tithe. Bad precedent, but miraculously, nobody will ever notice.
Put another way, the application of XBL changes. The application of Xbox is to play games. The app of the remote control is to enable DVD playback. The app of XBL is to provide online competition, cooperation, and communication. But now, XBL is a patch delivery system as well. And what happens when Xbox owners who don't have XBL (and weren't previously interested) start to see it as such? They get XBL. What does that make this? Paid patching, that's what. Now, what happens when Microsoft starts seeing paid patching as a revenue stream (thereby making its use as a selling point to publishers quite attractive to MS)? QA goes down, because both pubs and MS will see post-shipment bugfixing as nothing but a good thing - MS gets XBL subs, pubs can be lazier and can meet ship dates by shipping buggier code. Welcome to Windows gaming, console fans. How stupid we've been these nigh 20-30 years.
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.