Xbox 360 Game Patching Costs $40,000

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 Schafer 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."

Comments

Get it right the first time

[LostCluster]

Patches are not cheap to deploy, you've got to bother your customers and pay for bandwidth. It makes a whole lot more sense to put the effort into getting the right code onto the disc before it ships.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

That's odd, since they're pretty cheap to deploy on the PC.

Re:Get it right the first time

[LostCluster]

On a PC users expect there to be updates that fix things, many XBox units never see the Internet at all.

Re:Get it right the first time

[jeffmeden]

Patches are not cheap to deploy, you've got to bother your customers and pay for bandwidth. It makes a whole lot more sense to put the effort into getting the right code onto the disc before it ships.

Epic first post. I was going to suggest that he not think of it as a "Patching Fee", he should instead consider it a "Don't fuck up" fee... It does sound exorbitant, but that's life in the big city.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Fluffeh]

Patches are not cheap to deploy, you've got to bother your customers and pay for bandwidth. It makes a whole lot more sense to put the effort into getting the right code onto the disc before it ships.

Having worked on porting the Unreal and UT Series to consoles, I know just how much testing takes place, and it really is done to a very high level. But having said that, once a product is in the wild, well, anything is possible especially with the way that folks generally try to do the "silly" things. In most games, achievement systems even reward many of those things that players years ago would have never gone through and done.

I agree with "Get it right" for console games, but I also agree that if a problem is found that can be fixed, it shouldn't cost that much to send out a few files.

Re:Get it right the first time

[wolrahnaes]

In this case the patches also have to go through the console's usual certification process which obviously involves Microsoft or Sony employees spending time on it. Also remember that until the current generation of consoles, games were expected to work right out of the box and not need patching. Obviously that didn't always happen, as anyone who's used cheat devices like Gameshark can attest to some big sellers had many revisions over the years and games like Morrowind on Xbox had game-breaking bugs which required re-buying the "Game of the Year" edition to fix, but the idea is that console games should not be treated like PC titles where launch-day patches are almost expected.

I'm not defending the exact numbers, $40,000 does seem rather high, but between actually charging for the certification work, CDN space, and bandwidth used plus adding a "try to get it right the first time" charge it might not be unreasonable.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

What about for games that are downloadable games in the first place... like, I don't know... EVERY SINGLE GAME ON XBOX LIVE ARCADE, WHICH IF YOU READ THE ARTICLE, YOU WOULD KNOW THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT.

I'd like an apology from MS for all the updates I didn't get to Live Arcade games because Microsoft wants to charge the developer for the update, in addition to charging the gamer for the game (MS takes 30% off the top) and charging the gamer for the Live subscription (pure MS profit).

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's why so many patches on your PC suck, many game patches introducing as many bugs as they fix (hello Dragon Age: Origins 1.05). You can trumpet your PC superiority as much as you want, this is one area that makes PC gaming suck horrible ass.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Moryath]

Hell, in this generation the consoles THEMSELVES are "ship now, patch later" bullshit... Xbox360, PS3, Wii, all of them constantly need "updates." And rarely do they ever improve functionality.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any data to support that claim? My anecdotal experience suggests that almost all Xbox 360s are connected to the internet. I struggle to think of a single one I've encountered first hand among friends and acquaintances, or by second-hand reference, that wasn't connected to the internet - at least, for the majority of its active time. I haven't done any studies but I strongly doubt your claim here.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

$40,000 is approximately what it would cost to store and deliver 150 MB to 14 million people with Amazon CloudFront.

That's Call of Duty MW3 numbers using a 3rd party CDN at regular pricing.

I think it's safe to say MSFT is gouging on patch delivery.

Re:Get it right the first time

[cforciea]

I know I recently got told that I'm never getting a bunch of updates for my Xbox 360 version of Dungeon Defenders including new content that's been out for months of the PC specifically because of this cost.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, in this generation the consoles THEMSELVES are "ship now, patch later" bullshit... Xbox360, PS3, Wii, all of them constantly need "updates." And rarely do they ever improve functionality.

Huh? The 360 and Wii have both gotten tons of features from those updates... the PS3 has as well, but it's also taken them away, so... meh.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Lumpy]

Bother customers - Free
Distribute Patch - Free if you TORRENT IT. Many game companies do this. Hell ID was king of posting patches on MegaUpload and FileFront. Again FREE.
Patching is a fact of life for games, but it is not expensive at all to get the patch out to players. MSFT is simply gouging developers hard.

I'm guessing that cost is why Fallout III and New Vegas were bug riddled And Skyrim seems to be a bugfest as well.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Moryath]

In case you think I'm joking... out of the last 10 disc games I bought for the Xbox360, 9 had a 0-day patch already sitting on Xbox Live. Out of the last 10 games I bought on Xbox Live, 7 of 10 had a patch the day I bought it. NONE of the games I currently own for the 360 has gone unpatched. Not one. And to top it off, their "interface updates" made half the dashboard themes pointless and unusable, since most of the visuals wind up hidden behind that stupid bottom-half "grey shadow" area.

The Wii games aren't patchable (which got them into a bit of trouble when Metroid: Other M turned out to have a game-breaking bug) but how often have they pushed out console updates? And what have they done with them really? Except for the one that allowed for larger SD storage and the swap-trick to "play games" off of storage (really, just leaving internal storage blank and swapping the chosen item from SD into it on the fly), what have they actually patched? It doesn't seem they've done much of anything, certainly the interface never improved.

And let's not even get started with the garbage updates on the PS3, that actually REMOVED features...

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Had mine since 2006. Never connected it once.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if your anecdotal evidence doesn't show it it must be true!

Re:Get it right the first time

[Sir_Sri]

about 25% of 360's and PS3's don't have internet. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28058/Study_PS3_Has_Highest_Percentage_Of_Connected_Consoles.php

But Xbox and PS3 still require updates to play new games, so you're getting system software via disks one way or another. Game updates, well, your game might just not work as well. But, a lot of the updates pushed are specifically about multiplayer or DLC anyway, and if you don't have internet you don't care about multiplayer or DLC.

The big thing is that the console makers have testing guidelines you have to meet for your game, and design requirements (non interactive loading screens can only be so long that kind of thing). They force you to do a lot first, or you don't get to sell your game with them. With the PC if you run out of money release what you have, use the money you make to patch in fixes and start the next one. That's a sad commentary on the business but these things happen.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

And rarely do they ever improve functionality.

I'm guessing you didn't have a 360 pre-NXE. For one thing, they support a lot more video formats now and since the latest update (ugly MF that it is) is bringing a few more features even if they are useless to me.

Re:Get it right the first time

[interkin3tic]

Updates for the wii were mostly to try to keep ahead of pirated copies of games and break chipped consoles. The first year, every time I turned on the wii, it needed to update, and I was playing it every other day. It did not gain any real features in that time. The games started requiring the update as well. A friend of mine had a chipped wii and couldn't play legally purchased games as a result. At least until he took it back to the place he got it chipped for an update.

Minor inconvenience for him, slightly annoying to me, and an absolutely shitty thing to do to a kid who wants to play his legally-purchased game on his console but isn't fortunate enough to have a wifi connection to update.

By now the wii does have more features, though I don't know about a TON.

Re:Get it right the first time

[jeffmeden]

What about for games that are downloadable games in the first place... like, I don't know... EVERY SINGLE GAME ON XBOX LIVE ARCADE, WHICH IF YOU READ THE ARTICLE, YOU WOULD KNOW THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT.

I'd like an apology from MS for all the updates I didn't get to Live Arcade games because Microsoft wants to charge the developer for the update, in addition to charging the gamer for the game (MS takes 30% off the top) and charging the gamer for the Live subscription (pure MS profit).

Yes the massive data centers, the tens of thousands of servers, and the multitude of very fast internet backhauls were all discovered lying out back of the MS headquarters late one night; ever since then, it's been all profit! sigh. This is just one data point so for all we know, it was one figure quoted to an individual who had no particular bargaining skills and was interested in publishing a patch to a game with an install base of 50 million copies.

You could say that the cost of the update should be baked into the cut that MS takes for distributing, but you can't really say that the expense is, or the cost should ever be, negligible.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Luckyo]

May I suggest that microsoft does more then serve as a pipe? Things like QC cost money.

Re:Get it right the first time

[jedidiah]

Things like QC cost money assuming it's actually being done rather than the vendor taking your money.

It's kind of like that whole "support" thing.

Re:Get it right the first time

[PRMan]

Nintendo has tried in vain to remove hacks like the Homebrew Channel. Many of the patches have been trying to stomp it out and closing the bugs that allowed it to be possible in the first place. I would guess the remaining ones have to do with their new "channels".

Re:Get it right the first time

[medv4380]

No, those games are riddled with bugs because they were made by PC developers that have the mentality you do about patching. Console developers were punished for years with no option to patch a game once it hit shelves so they put more time and effort getting it write the first time.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Moryath]

I'm guessing that cost is why Fallout III and New Vegas were bug riddled And Skyrim seems to be a bugfest as well.

You probably haven't played many Bethesda games then. Bethesda in general release incredibly buggy titles. 90% of the bugs fixed in the PC versions of Fallout:NV, Fallout 3, Oblivion, Morrowind, and earlier Bethesda titles have only been patched because people in the mod community got so fucking fed up with Bethesda's incompetent patch division that they did the patching themselves and released it to the community at large.

I'm all for pointing out that Microsoft gouges developers on the cost to issue patches over Xbox Live, but blaming Microsoft for Bethesda's shitty coding is just being blatantly ignorant of history.

Re:Get it right the first time

[wolrahnaes]

Don't even get me started on Microsoft's boneheaded implementation of patching for games purchased on Live. Why the hell it downloads the original version then only bothers to patch when I want to actually play the game is mind boggling. If a title was released years ago and hasn't had a patch in quite some time, how hard can it be to make the version I'd download if I bought it today be patched right off the bat?

Re:Get it right the first time

[jedidiah]

That's kind of like whining that it cost millions to produce 63 minutes of music when the people running things are actively encouraged to waste money like it's going out of style.

Instead if hiring and then firing a producer and spending millions in the process, just don't bother to hire that guy to begin with.

It's like that.

Monopolies suck at seeking economic efficiency.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Dahamma]

I'm not saying the number isn't still high for most titles, but the console manufacturers do significant testing on all games and patches as well.

Add in a few hundred man-hours of work for the various mastering, verification, certification, and functional testing steps and that could easily be in the low 5 figures of labor cost...

Re:Get it right the first time

[Guppy06]

If QC actually happened, would there be so many patches to begin with?

Re:Get it right the first time

[Moryath]

AFAIK, the things the Wii has added:
- one or two channels (never gave a crap about them really). Not sure if channels qualify as "OS" since they are just apps like any Wii Store game.
- SDHC memory card support... sorta.
- "Play game from memory card"... works sorta, only if you keep enough of your Wii's tiny 512MB internal storage free to allow for swap space.
- Control drivers for the "Wii MotionPlus", which is the cheapest, chintziest way of adding gravity sensing using a tuning fork gyroscope... I mean seriously, would a couple accelerometers with decent sensitivity be too much to ask? I've got a joystick from the year 2000 that has better motion sensitivity than a Wiimote + Motionplus working together. Sheesh.

What else did I miss? Anything? Bueller? Bueller?

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anaerin]

$40,000 is approximately what it would cost to store and deliver 150 MB to 14 million people with Amazon CloudFront.

That's Call of Duty MW3 numbers using a 3rd party CDN at regular pricing.

I think it's safe to say MSFT is gouging on patch delivery.

As of January 9, 2012, 66 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide

If your target market is more than a quarter of the sold 360's (16.5 million), then MSFT are undercharging, by your figures. And your cost analysis doesn't include any compatibility, QA, or security testing. It's also meant as a disincentive for releasing broken games first then patching later. I think it's safe to say MSFT is doing the right thing on patch delivery, as much as that will unfortunately hurt small developers. Perhaps they could introduce some kind of "rate-based" patch charge instead - Patches cost $1,000 + 0.1% retail profit.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Merk42]

Minor inconvenience for him, slightly annoying to me, and an absolutely shitty thing to do to a kid who wants to play his legally-purchased game on his console but isn't fortunate enough to have a wifi connection to update.

If a Wii game requires a certain version of software, it is on the disc of the game. So while it is true you need to update to play, it's not true that you need the Internet to do so.

Re:Get it right the first time

[countach]

Yeah, but Apple does it for $100 per year on IOS.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anubis IV]

If only Microsoft had had the foresight to collect fees from the gamers using their Xbox 360 console. You might think of it as a subscription, even, and you might even give them silly names like Gold or Silver. They could use it to support the infrastructure, that way silly $40,000 fines on developers wouldn't exist. It'd be a stable source of income that could keep data centers up and running.

Ah, if only they had thought to do it. I guess it makes sense why they resort to these sorts of fines instead.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the n.

Re:Get it right the first time

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Bethesda has some sort of company policy against releasing games that aren't hugely ambitious and deeply buggy with fairly high resource requirements. I'm not sure why; but Morrowind, its two expansion packs, Oblivion, its two expansion packs, Skyrim, Fallout III, and New Vegas, all followed this pattern.

Unfortunately for the consoles(and pretty shamelessly on Bethesda's part) it is rumored that some of the nastier issues with Skyrim on the consoles are more or less unfixable; because 512MB of RAM just doesn't go very far. They are still bugfests on the PC; but between the eventual patches and the unofficial mods(less helpful on core crash bugs, have done wonders with annoying in-game scriptbreaking stuff), it is much more likely that they'll eventually reach fully playable status...

Re:Get it right the first time

[devilspgd]

Or at least queue the patches automatically as part of the download bundle rather than not even starting the patch download process until the user is ready and waiting.

Re:Get it right the first time

[failedlogic]

PS3 one does same thing too.

Re:Get it right the first time

[hairyfeet]

Exactly, its not like MSFT doesn't have serious competition in this market with Sony and Nintendo so it isn't like they are gouging the developers here but you can't expect them to just eat the costs either. Patches have to be tested to make sure they don't cause problems with the system, with the game itself and with the network as a whole, because problems equal bad press and support issues. If these companies don't want to pay to patch they should do more QA and beta testing before shipping and there is always Steam. BTW does anyone know if there is a cost to Steam patching? Hoe about Sony or Nintendo? But considering how many indie game developers are making serious money on XBL I really don't think it is some horror story or people wouldn't be supporting XBL with their games, they'd be voting with their wallets and sticking with the other 3

Also this guy is bitching because he can't get funding for an ADVENTURE game, really? The point and click genre died out in the early 90s and was deader than Dixie by the time DOOM hit so no shit he isn't gonna get game companies to cough up for an adventure game as its doubtful they'd see their ROI even allow them to break even! Hell his Psychonauts took what? something like a decade to see the break even point? he is one of those "art house" style developers that while he wins awards those never seem to turn into sales, so anybody that bitches because he can't get funding for his pet project that is in a genre that's been dead 20 years i gotta take anything else they say with a big dose of salt.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

if you are right, it sucks even more. $40k to push out a patch that only a few will get...?

Re:Get it right the first time

[garyebickford]

I'll just add that long ago I used to teach a quality assurance workshop, and the data back then was that black box testing could only every find about 20% of all the bugs. IIRC there is actual theory behind this. Also, given a 'good' software practices methodology (design and code reviews, structured programming, walk throughs, etc.), about 70% of all the bugs are built into the original design (not the code). And, oh yeah - at each stage of the development process from proposal to design to various code releases to alpha, beta and final release, the cost of fixing a bug multiplies by 10. (In the extreme ends, a bug may cost $40,000 to fix after release, while it would have cost the time to move an eraser on the whiteboard in the design review.)

Re:Get it right the first time

[grahamd0]

I could easily imagine that Microosoft's QC is more focused on "does this damage our hardware/OS/reputation" than "does this do what the game designer intended".

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

If every single xbox game sold 14 million copies, everyone and their grandma would be writing xbox games right now.

Re:Get it right the first time

[History's Coming To]

You know what's more expensive? Losing customers. I'm on a rural connection where it takes around 24 hours to download 1Gb, so after requiring a ~3Gb download on Battlefield 3 I'm not going to risk buying anything from EA again. The game was so broken on release it required a "patch" of 60% of the game disc? No thanks, I'm not going to bother in the future. If it's not right, don't release it. To top it all you had to download extended content even if you weren't going to pay to activate it. Nonsense all round.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Teknikal69]

Mine has never been connected to the Internet either so you can add me for proof.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Bengie]

Assuming what Netflix pays for GB/$, $40k will buy you about 1.3PB of data. That is A LOT of patch data.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Missing.Matter]

Why should I have to pay for developers to patch a broken game I already paid for?

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring computer/storage costs, $40k is what it would cost Netflix to transfer 150MB to 7bil+ people.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anubis IV]

You shouldn't, but that's missing the entire point of what I was saying (i.e. whoosh).

If you have a 360, there's a good chance you already are paying. That was the point I was making. Microsoft is already collecting the subscription fees I was talking about (with my tongue firmly planted in cheek). I question the necessity to double dip by charging developers a fee when they're already charging gamers a fee, both of which are presumably being applied towards handling the same set of expenses, namely data centers and other infrastructure costs.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Darinbob]

It's the whole "Live" thing that's broken. It's a means of gaining control as opposed to the internet where people can do stuff without giving Microsoft a piece of the action.

Re:Get it right the first time

[joocemann]

I very grumpily accept the patching schemes of modern games, deferring to my enjoyment and the high complexity of code in modern big games. Fortunately, small devs make small games, so it behooves them not to be lazier thn their predecessors, whose small games seemed big at th time (nes, snes, genesis) whereby extensive testing was required so the release would be undoubtably stable.

No, smalldev mcgee, youre not impressing me enough to be 1) permitted to release buggy games and 2) complain about the high costs of the patches your games are too small to require (if youre not lazy or overextending).

Re:Get it right the first time

[mikkelm]

Where did you get that number?

Re:Get it right the first time

[kernelphr34k]

"It makes a whole lot more sense to put the effort into getting the right code onto the disc before it ships."

I concur with your statement, and wish more SW development organizations adopted. In reality managers don't think that's a priority. Getting the code (sw, app, driver etc) out the door and into customers hands is more of a priory. Working in a fortune 100 company, administering build machines I see this attitude everyday. Does not matter if there is dead code, or its a little off. Its all about getting the product out so company can make more $$$.

Re:Get it right the first time

[deek]

Wii games can be patched. Look up Zelda Skyward Sword. You can download a patch for it. It may be an exception to the rule, though. I'm not experienced enough with the Wii.

Yep, the PS3 has removed features with their patches, which I think is a horrible precedent for device updates. I definitely got burnt when they removed Linux support. I can't believe our legal systems allowed them to do it. The amusing thing is, it accelerated the attempts by hackers to crack the console. Hence, it achieved exactly the opposite of what Sony wanted. A stupid decision on Sony's part.

  You have to admit though, the PS3 has also added a good number of new features with updates. Support for new bluray features, improved video file playback, 3D support, online TV channels, better browser abilities, motion control support, video editor, in-game custom music, added visuals while playing music. Just some that I can remember off the top of my head. New features, basically for free. It does make the console much more interesting.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Kalriath]

I'm pretty sure Skyrim damages everyone's reputation.

Re:Get it right the first time

[interkin3tic]

There was evidently an update that allowed netflix without the disc being in the wii. I briefly plugged the wii back in a few weeks ago when the other netflix machine was down, and that was a surprise. However, as I couldn't update the system, I have no idea whether that actually works.

Re:Get it right the first time

[mjwx]

I'm not defending the exact numbers, $40,000 does seem rather high, but between actually charging for the certification work, CDN space, and bandwidth used plus adding a "try to get it right the first time" charge it might not be unreasonable.

This is how the console manufacturers make money. The PS3 and Xbox 360 were sold as loss leaders with additional services making up the loss. Of course $40K per patch is ridiculous for CDN and certification. You could host your own patches for 1/4 that, but you have to pay Sony/Microsoft as you have to distribute through XBL/PSN otherwise you cant get it on the PS3/Xbox.

It's not about encouraging developers to get it right the first time, it's about fleecing the developers because they're easier to lock in than the consumers. MS/Sony encorage developers to release early.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because the digital version is actually the same bits as the disc version, just packaged differently. If they updated the image they would have to retest. By using the existing title update process, they don't have to test a different combination.

This may not sound like much for a single title, but when you have many titles and many combinations, the reduction in complexity is really important.

Re:Get it right the first time

[dead_user]

Weird, I've been using Netflix on my Wii for like 3 years now. I've never had a Netflix disc.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Stan92057]

Ohhh i didn't know they didn't pay the employees to patch the game. Funny, i would have though that was the bulk of the cost to fix a game.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Missing.Matter]

both of which are presumably being applied towards handling the same set of expenses

I think that this presumption is wrong. First, there obviously is some set of services that do not overlap, like testing and certifying patches. So Microsoft has to hire personnel to do the certification and make sure the patch won't destroy your console.

But even if we ignore that, I see it as a simple supply and demand issue. If Microsoft were to pay for all the infrastructure, data centers, and certifiers with your Live subscription, leaving no cost for the developers, Microsoft would simply be flooded with patch submissions. Every time someone fixed the tiniest bug, they would submit a patch request. What do they have to lose? Charging developers a fee ensures that they have something to lose by submitting a patch. They are forced to get it right the first time, rather than develop shoddy code with the mindset that "I can always fix it later."

Obviously Microsoft can't service this kind of environment, and the user experience would suffer when you have to download a new patch every time you want to play. Thus Microsoft charges a fee to decrease demand. So perhaps the $40k is high, but it's probably priced at a level that pays for all Microsoft's costs, attenuates demand, and earns them a little profit as well. For anyone who can't afford this kind of certification, there's always the Xbox Live Indie Games to get your game on the marketplace.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

You're so cool for disliking popular things.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Cimexus]

Technically the Skyward Sword patch patches the ~save game data~ of affected games, not the game software itself. It's basically just a normal Wii channel that scans for affected files and fixes them. A good thing to be sure, but not really comparable to the patching of the game software itself.

Re:Get it right the first time

[donscarletti]

The game was so broken on release it required a "patch" of 60% of the game disc?

You're new to the Battlefield series then?

Don't worry, when that number passes 100% and they must be on to at least their third draft of everything, it will be a brilliant game.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Pseudonym Authority]

I think that you are forgetting that Microsoft is not the government, but are instead a company that wants to make a profit and does so by selling services. Please recognize that Microsoft cannot force developers to release early and release game breaking bugs, nor does Microsoft levy taxes or fines on all gamers, nor is it their responsibility to make sure that everyone can publish crappy software and then patch it for free. They do have make money on this and I think that you need to realize that they are under no obligation to serve the public any more than why they are bound to by contract.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anubis IV]

I didn't forget. That doesn't mean I agree with it, however.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of months my XBox360 updated itself and I suddenly got: a new funky user interface, voice and gesture control, apps for video on demand for local Australian channels. I was pretty impressed with that.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

As I recall from Behemoth's fuck up with Castle Crashers, they were claiming that Microsoft allows you one patch for free, but the cost goes up after that. That's why they were pushing back their patch for as long as possible to fix as much as possible for free.

While I was pissed at Behemoth for letting the bugs get out, I couldn't disagree with their stance. The feeling that I got was that Microsoft accepts that some stuff won't actually break until everything goes live, but they wanted that breakage minimized and you need to do your testing in house. You release, you get 1 chance to fix breaks, but after that, you are paying for your fuck ups.

Honestly, I really hope that that is Microsoft's attitude. Patching makes the game developer and Microsoft look bad and MSFT has an active stake in seeing that reduced.

Re:Get it right the first time

[kelemvor4]

Mine's never been connected to the net, either. My kids play it, I don't want some halo player telling my kids about the various methods he will use to rape them between matches.

When they're old enough for this to not concern me, I'll get them a PC and they can play real online games.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

They're going to have to find out one way or another. Don't let their first rape be a surprise

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you even want to get it right the first time on PC, when you can have your customers pay you to be beta testers?

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

A fee indicates service rendered usually. This patching is more like a punishment, so consider it the "Don't Fuck Up Tax".

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

$40,000 is approximately what it would cost to store and deliver 150 MB to 14 million people with Amazon CloudFront.

That's Call of Duty MW3 numbers using a 3rd party CDN at regular pricing.

I think it's safe to say MSFT is gouging on patch delivery.

Yeah, I'd say they are. And I also say, "GOOD for them."

They're making people who deploy shitty code actually PAY for their actions. As the title of the thread you posted in says, "Get it right the FIRST time."

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing that cost is why Fallout III and New Vegas were bug riddled And Skyrim seems to be a bugfest as well.

LOL

Go buy a used copy of Daggerfall for the PC. I say buy because I doubt you'll find anybody who bothered to pirate it. Try playing it without patches. Try playing it with patches. And if for some reason you are still trying at that point, go find the user-created patches which actually fixed things.

Bethesda has always released buggy, unstable, and generally shitty code. It's kind of one of their trademarks.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm sure they will miss your money.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, it is negligible. Think about it. MegaUpload served up standard and high definition streaming for ~60 minutes out of every ~120 minutes for just some ads. You could pay for subscriptions, but if you think about it... the type of people who use MU wouldn't likely pay for it. Even then, I think a yearly subscription was in the $100s, a little bit more than XBL costs (probably footing some of the bill for the non-paying).

http://seekingalpha.com/article/321912-how-megaupload-com-s-shutdown-impacts-cogent-communications
"The financial hit isn't nearly as bad as the traffic hit of the nearly 50 petabytes per day of data which Cogent delivered, now reduced by around one-fourth."

50/4 = 12 PB per day. That's what, 100,000,000 GB / day? That's 1,000,000 users downloading a 1GB patch every day for a service that charges no money to the vast majority of it's users.

Yes, it takes some money to maintain BUT gimme a break. 40K for a single patch? that's just greedy. Then again, what can you do? It's a closed system.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Hadlock]

In the PC world, developers often patch in additional content or features. New levels, new guns, new costumes, better UI. Balance patches, emergent gameplay tweaks (who knew rocket jumping would spawn entire game types/play style?). Adding additional language support, tutorial levels, user made levels. Special holiday events/levels. If you're already paying $60/yr for online console access, wouldn't you want these things? Valve pretty much blew the concept out of the water that "release it, patch it once" is a valid strategy for continued sales with online multiplayer games. Sony is jumping in bed with Valve for their next few titles and it will be very interesting to see what happens with CS:GO over the next couple of years. This concept that developers can't patch their software on Microsoft's service is going to have to change at some point. PC users have a hard time believing that console games don't get patched very often.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Xest]

I don't think my XBox 360 has ever had a patch that doesn't improve functionality in the 4 years I've had it, so you're wrong on that. You're also wrong to imply they constantly need updates - maybe 1 or 2 a year at most, that's hardly on the scale of the almost daily, and certainly at least weekly barrage of updates I get on my PC between Windows update, Java's updater, and Flash updater etc.

Updates are pretty much always there to give complete new features, the only exceptions I can recall is where they released parts of new features early but didn't enable them until a later update a few weeks later to spread the load.

There's been a pretty clear evolution of the console from 360 updates, the launch dashboard and the features available pale in comparison to the avatar and general 3D content supporting, voice and gesture enabled, search supporting dashboard of today.

My Wii saw a lot more updates that didn't really seem to improve anything granted, and I don't have a PS3 so can't really judge, but certainly the situation with the 360 isn't anything like you are claiming - the console hardware updates are neither void of feature improvements, nor are they constant. Game updates are a different matter, and if they charge companies $40,000 for them then great, it'll encourage them to release quality titles from the outset.

Re:Get it right the first time

[drinkypoo]

Have you considered crystal meth, or perhaps leaving the shit hole you live in?

Leaving the shit hole that you live in and getting away from people like you is why people like myself and the GP live in bumfuck and have rural connections.

Mine's not quite as bad as the GP's; I have 768kbps peaking to 1.5Mbps for $45, but having to download massive multi-gigabyte patches to play games is not OK with me either.

Re:Get it right the first time

[drinkypoo]

You're probably better off using the disc. The new netflix client appears to be some kind of streamed HTML-esque interface and it stinks on ice. It takes longer than ever before to load artwork and descriptions, ESPECIALLY when opening up a series with a lot of episodes. Presumably they are sending vastly more data per query than necessary, ala gmail. (compare a gmail session to a pop/smtp session... OUCH.)

Re:Get it right the first time

[Xest]

No, you're conflating issue for no reason other than to attempt to Microsoft bash and it just makes your argument look silly. You're pursuing a line of argument that simply makes absolutely no sense just for the sake of trolling a company.

You can complain that Microsoft is making a profit off it's paying customers, you can complain that it's charging developers to release patches which have to be certified and distributed, but to imply that one should pay for the other or vice versa just doesn't make any sense.

The two have to be accounted for differently, for good reason, for example, patches are released to silver members, and they don't even pay a subscription. Are you really suggesting Microsoft should have to foot the cost of certification and distribution of patches to these users itself when the game company has fucked up and released a buggy game rather than bill the company for the costs incurred for it's mistake?

The Gold subscription pays for more than just patches, it pays for things like Last.fm and many of the video services, so if you drop the patch fees to developers then Gold users are subsidising patches for silver and not just their additional content which is unfair. If you drop the gold subscription then Microsoft is left in an awkward situation where it doesn't have a reliable income stream (it has no idea when or how many patches a game will need) to fund other features that are entirely unrelated to patching such as free content streaming.

Put simply, conflating the issues of billing for patches, and billing for gold content makes no sense - they pay for completely different things and to ditch one would have negative effects on the other. You can't run a business without making sure you know how different parts of it are going to be paid for, it's a sure way to fail.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Patches are not cheap to deploy, you've got to bother your customers and pay for bandwidth. It makes a whole lot more sense to put the effort into getting the right code onto the disc before it ships.

You mean like Microsoft does with Windows?

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, in this generation the consoles THEMSELVES are "ship now, patch later" bullshit... Xbox360, PS3, Wii, all of them constantly need "updates." And rarely do they ever improve functionality.

The Xbox360 receives about 3-4 patches a year and, and I do not agree with you that they rarely improve functionality. The Xbox360 has had two major UI overhauls, and on top of that several new things have be added. Think about Kinnect, Live Vision, Chat pad, Netflix video rental etc. They have all been added through these updates.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about Kinnect

I'd rather not. I refuse to shell out $150 for that piece of shit.

Live Vision

Which has what purpose exactly? Nope. Don't want.

Chat pad

Ah yes. Turn your Xbox into a glorified fucking IRC channel. Yawn. If I want IRC I'll get on IRC.

Netflix video rental

Does nothing my laptop doesn't do far better.

None of these were improvements.

Re:Get it right the first time

[BigSes]

getting it write the first time.

Speaking of, its right the first time.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

I pay to use the XBox service. I thought that $60/yr could go to, in part, patching games. This sounds more like Microsoft extorting game developers, especially when there is no fee for Windows updates.

"Oh, your game is broken? What a shame. Hate to see that patch not go out. But I'm sure we could negotiate a fee..."

Re:Get it right the first time

[Missing.Matter]

Most of those things you mentioned are forms of DLC and not patches. I don't know what the cost of submitting DLC to the marketplace is, but I would bet it's much less than a patch.

Re:Get it right the first time

[History's Coming To]

I love 1943, it's one of the best computer games ever written in my opinion (up there with E.L.I.T.E in my book), and BC2 was pretty damned good, the only patch I downloaded was a couple of meg, and that was the Vietnam material. There's the irony....the Vietnam material was clearly on the disc, the download was simply something to activate it. That's sensible, hell, I'd go so far as to say clever.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Kalriath]

You miss the point. I like Skyrim. Even pumped in entirely too many hours. It's just incredibly fucking buggy.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if your anecdotal evidence doesn't show it it must be true!

it's enough to refute the base-less, unsubstantiated claim it is in response to.

Re:Get it right the first time

[exomondo]

a fucked up user interface

As in 'i don't like it'. It's basically a tabbed form of the old one that puts all the 'channel' content on the screen for each tab at once, it's more efficient.

a bunch of shit based on a shitty interface (Kinect) that I refuse to shell out $150 for

I don't use kinect for the UI, seems kind of pointless, but the voice stuff is good.

and a bunch of app crap that I never used. I'm unimpressed and MS can go fuck themselves.

Wow, getting a bit angry and fired up there aren't you? It's just a dashboard update. The new video on demand and youtube stuff isn't going to appeal to everyone so i guess you just wouldn't be using it.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather not. I refuse to shell out $150 for that piece of shit.

Yes yes, we'll get off your lawn you angry tight old man, you can keep your Model M too. Holy shit it's $150, that's nothing.

Which has what purpose exactly?

Video chat, grandpa. Obviously.

Ah yes. Turn your Xbox into a glorified fucking IRC channel. Yawn.

Actually it's a keyboard, you know, for text input. Not just chatting, but i suppose the arthritis would stop you from using it anyway.

Does nothing my laptop doesn't do far better.

Yeah just plug the laptop into the TV...oh wait, i don't need to because my xbox is already connected, don't need to bother with the laptop just to watch a movie.

None of these were improvements.

lol...you're clearly way too old and set in your ways, technology is just too much for you old man.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Hadlock]

In most of the games I've bought, they were in patches. Any content can be transmitted and labeled DLC. DLC for me means "paid extra content".

Re:Get it right the first time

[Missing.Matter]

Do you own an Xbox? That's the way the content you describe is delivered on this platform. It doesn't have to be paid either; I've downloaded many extra levels, character packs, holiday specials etc. for games without paying anything.

Re:Get it right the first time

[exomondo]

If you have a 360, there's a good chance you already are paying. That was the point I was making. Microsoft is already collecting the subscription fees I was talking about (with my tongue firmly planted in cheek). I question the necessity to double dip by charging developers a fee when they're already charging gamers a fee, both of which are presumably being applied towards handling the same set of expenses, namely data centers and other infrastructure costs.

If that were true then Silver members (non-paying) wouldn't get updates or would have to pay for updates. Just because they charge one party for one thing doesn't mean they shouldn't charge another party for something different.

Re:Get it right the first time

[exomondo]

If you're already paying $60/yr for online console access, wouldn't you want these things?

Of course you would, and you do get them, they're called 'DLC'.

This concept that developers can't patch their software on Microsoft's service is going to have to change at some point.

Huh? What concept is that? Do you actually know what this is based on? It's not that they can't patch their software on Microsoft's service, in fact it's not even specific to Microsoft at all, it's from a one-liner quote about the cost to patch a game on home consoles.

Re:Get it right the first time

[damiangerous]

No you haven't. You've only been using it since October 18, 2010, or no more than about a year and four months.

Re:Get it right the first time

[rtb61]

It's called choice, people like it, especially customers. Suppliers who act like dicks and deny the customer a choice and force changes upon, hmm, existing purchases, in order to create annoyance and awkwardness as a motivation buy more stuff, well, they really are fucking arse holes.

Companies need to remember to let the customer choose what changes they will and will not allow. Don't want angry customers, don't blame them and act like a dick.

Re:Get it right the first time

[Hadlock]

Perhaps you missed the beginning of my post it started off with "In the PC world,". I weep for the downhill turn of reading comprehension on the internet these days.

Re:Get it right the first time

[DarthVain]

Ya I was about to mention that while Skyrim was a long game, it seems to be the most buggy I have played in awhile, on either the PC or a console. Well maybe WOW, with bugged quests/fights, but that was over years of playing and content releases, so it isn't quite the same.

I also have a brand new xbox360 that I am running it on (from Nov) fully patched. I have had half a dozen game crashing bugs, one mission bug, and several AI/power bugs (like clairvoyance always pointing to the guard on the right at the entrance of Solitude), as well as a couple of "clipping" bugs where you walk through walls, fall through floors, etc...

I don't recall any bugs in Fallout 3, but that was the PC version (which I don't think I played right away, so likely patched).

Re:Get it right the first time

[Missing.Matter]

I understand exactly what you said. Maybe you need some reading, or at least context comprehension.

Recap:

Anubis IV claims developers shouldn't have to pay to submit bug patches because Xbox live customers already pay for data centers and infrastructure.

I ask why I should pay for developers to use my gaming infrastructure to patch a broken game that probably shouldn't have been released in the first place.

You note that on the PC, developers include new content in patches, so it's not just about fixing a broken game, but adding new content and I should want to pay for that privilege.

I claim on the Xbox, new content is available via DLC, and conjecture that it is most likely cheaper to submit DLC to the marketplace because tons of content is free, just as on the PC.

You then rail against me for not being able to follow the conversation. So where exactly am I not understanding you here? Did I miss anything? Again I ask: Why should I have to pay for a developer to host and distribute a patch to fix a broken game on the Xbox? Developers are paying for hosting and bandwidth to distribute patches on the PC. They should have to pay on the Xbox as well. I pay $60 a year for the Xbox live gold services, and I don't like the idea of lazy developers who can't bother to release a finished game getting a free ride on my subscription. They should have an incentive to release a working game in the first place.

Re:Get it right the first time

[exomondo]

It's called choice, people like it, especially customers.

You have choice, wtf are you on about?

Suppliers who act like dicks and deny the customer a choice and force changes upon, hmm, existing purchases

Yeah you say that but you're wrong, you don't have to upgrade.

in order to create annoyance and awkwardness as a motivation buy more stuff, well, they really are fucking arse holes.

In what way does it create annoyance and awkwardness? The new interface is more efficient than the older one even forgetting about kinect.

Companies need to remember to let the customer choose what changes they will and will not allow. Don't want angry customers, don't blame them and act like a dick.

They do have the choice of whether to upgrade or not, no-one is blaming the customer for anything. But the thing that should be blindingly obvious is that there are dependencies going forward, if you want to get the latest version of Final Cut Pro you can't expect to run it on a PowerPC with OS9.

Re:Get it right the first time

[MikeBabcock]

I can't speak for the 360, but on the PS3 there's a nice permission option to prevent inter-user chat for children's accounts.

Note however that several games simply fail to load if you have that option disabled, instead of making it optional (sadly).

Re:Get it right the first time

[MikeBabcock]

The 360 got a whole new interface as i recall. The PS3 gained in-game XMB, a new chat feature and trophy stuff. The PSP gained lots of new features, and I can't speak for the Wii.

As for the updates designed to prevent piracy, a great many of those are actually security fixes (which is how hacks usually work after all) and not liking a company for releasing security updates is a little odd even if it is self-serving.

Re:Get it right the first time

[MikeBabcock]

Agreed. Ditto for every other game they've made though. Bethesda makes huge worlds with great role-playing features and fun stories and good characters ... but seems horrible at QA when it comes to code stability.

Re:Get it right the first time

[MikeBabcock]

Epic sarcasm.

Quick thought -- how much does Sony charge for updates considering its free PSN policy?

Re:Get it right the first time

[Anubis IV]

I'm actually rather curious about that, to be honest, but I decided not to address it in that comment.

Double Fine?

[LostCluster]

Does this guy pay all his parking tickets twice?

Re:Double Fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

DA DUM TIS!

Re:Double Fine?

[Barefoot Monkey]

No, but you're not far off. Go to their FAQ and scroll down to Where does the name “Double Fine” come from? - apparently Tim thought that the "double fine zone" sign would make great free advertising.

Re:Double Fine?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Fine as in nice, not fine as in fee. They're double-nice. Or maybe you're being funny. Hah?

Re:Double Fine?

[Dahamma]

Actually, the name came from a speeding sign on the Golden Gate Bridge... he was pretty close :)

down side of locked in stores and what's up censor

[Joe_Dragon]

down side of locked in stores and what's up with censorship?

Why?

[laffer1]

Is this inclusive of a fee for bandwidth costs? What is the reason for the fee to be so large?

Microsoft is pushing cloud computing now right.. why not charge based on how many users download patches?

Re:Why?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Its because Microsoft has to take time to certify every patch put out on Live, just like they certify every game software put out for the 360. That said, Microsoft is a business, and is trying to make money from their licencing agreements. Consoles cost tons and tons of money to design, and then you actually sell them ON A LOSS. You have to make up all those millions purely through licences with developers, one way or another.

That said, they're shooting themselves in the foot making it hard for people to develop for their platform. Indie developers need access. And the whole expensive and drawn out certification process means that PC gamers get patches for games weeks or even MONTHS before console gamers see them, even if they're for the same game. Its not that they do PC first, they do both simultaneously (or console first) but PC goes out as soon as PC is ready.

If they embraced the 360 as more of a general purpose computer that can do gaming well for cheap, then they could skip the certification process and be more like PC. But right now they're shooting for a perfect, controlled console environment.

Re:Why?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

It has nothing to do with bandwidth, $40,000 buys you a lot of bandwidth. And your solution doesn't work at all. Charge based on downloads? So, if lots of people download it... it ends up costing just as much. So this is only good for people who patch games that nobody plays anymore, which is... nobody. I guess the idea is that smaller games will be downloaded less than larger games? That kinda works, but its roundabout.

They just need to have more licencing options available for indie developers. Have it such that patching fees are tiered based on the size of the game and sales.

Re:Why?

[peragrin]

no it is more like Microsoft treating the Xbox like IBM does with Mainframes. Or sun used to do with Sparcs.

For every step you have 12 managers who need to sign off of it.

Or you can do it like apple, or google and just let it go through. If it breaks it is the developers fault.

Re:Why?

[beelsebob]

And yet people complain about it when apple asks you to pay $99 to allow you to have an unlimited number of applications certified >.

Re:Why?

[Charliemopps]

I disagree with your blanket statement that $40k buys a lot of bandwidth. Having worked int he telecom industry I can tell you that yes... that would be the fee per month for 1 very large circuit. But patching is an entirely different thing. I used to work for ATT and every time SOE had a patch for one of their games, their circuits would hit their "burstable" cap that day... sure they'd get the bandwidth they needed but each patch cost them well in excess of $40k and this was back when they just had EQ1. I'm sure this games patch size is much smaller than what SOEs were, but even so, having 30k users download a 2mb patch all on the same day is not friendly to your bandwidth bill. If they spread it out over a month or 2 that'd be different, but that's not what happens in reality.

Re:Why?

[Lumpy]

Funds from Every patch goes to buy more chairs for Steve Ballmer.

Re:Why?

[Missing.Matter]

That said, they're shooting themselves in the foot making it hard for people to develop for their platform. Indie developers need access.

That's exactly what Xbox Live Indie Games is for. Now this has its own associated problems, but it's not as expensive to develop for due to a less stringent review process.

Re:Why?

[Lumpy]

Thanks for the microsoft PR spew. Problem is it does not hold up to light. Both nintendo and PS3 do not rob game companies blind like MSFT does for patching.

In fact, Microsoft gets a buttload of money from "gold memberships" to enable online play that all the other platforms give out for free. Microsoft is raking in money pretty darn hard, dont even try to give us the company PR sob story.

Re:Why?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Did you read the first paragraph and stop? It was hardly an MS PR spew, I hate MS and I spent the rest of my post explaining why they were WRONG after setting the stage. Excuuuuuuse me, (princess) for trying to shed some perspective.

Re:Why?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Yeah, I was thinking about that. If you develop with Microsoft XNA the fees are all much less. But you also get special restrictions. *shrug*

Re:Why?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Do you have any idea how many users EQ1 had? Definitely factors of 10 or 100 larger than indie game audiences at least.

That said, fair enough.

Re:Why?

[yodleboy]

wait a sec... people COMPLAIN when Apple charges you $99 to tell you what the CONTENT of your app can and cannot be. If all they were doing is charging for a stability/vulnerability/security vetting that would be reasonable. Instead you pay $99 for that and for some guy to make arbitrary decisions on whether your app is either good enough, cool enough or "tasteful" enough according to rules they don't see fit to explain clearly and change without warning at any time.

Re:Why?

[Missing.Matter]

arbitrary decisions on whether your app is either good enough, cool enough or "tasteful" enough

At time I wish they were doing this, but evidenced by some of the bad, lame, untasteful apps on the appstore, they are not.

Re:Why?

[Sancho]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/09/apples-app-store-review-guidelines-we-dont-need-any-more-far/

This more or less confirms the GP.

Re:Why?

[laffer1]

Why do you think Microsoft should eat the cost of distributing patches?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

EQ1 is pretty old. Bandwidth should be cheaper now. Even if you have a 1GB patch, you could support 30k users simultaneously downloading it at 5 megabits/s on a 150 gigabit connection. That should be enough to allow 1m users to download it within 24 hours.

I'm not in the telecom industry so it's not easy to find quotes online for high end dedicated bandwidth, but it looks like it should cost under $60k/month. And that could be split among the dozens of games that release updates on Xbox Live every month, plus regular Xbox services that probably use comparatively little bandwidth (and are also paid for by Gold subscription fees).

Re:Why?

[Opportunist]

Just so I get it, how exactly is it the game maker's fault if MS is too dumb to calculate and sell their consoles above production cost?

Re:Why?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

THAT ISNT THE CONSOLE BUSINESS MODEL. That was never the plan. Its no being "too stupid", they do it entirely ON PURPOSE.

If a playstation 3 cost $900 (which for a brand new computer with a cell-broadband engine, motherboard, RAM, HDD, modem, etc. is a fair price) how many people would buy it? A few rich assholes, and the rest of us couldn't afford it.
Then, because only 10 people own the PS3, NOBODY would make games for it. You can't spend 100 million on a game that only has 10 people as a target audience. The entire console games industry simply would not work that way.

So the consoles are subsidized. You buy a console for LESS than it costs to manufacture, because you won't pay more right now. Then they tax the developers to make a game for the console that they just sold everybody at a huge loss, (as an investment), and the developers make money because lots of people can use the software, and the console maker gets a return on the gigantic investment.

God you're dumb. Please be more aware of your ignorance before you get belligerent.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the world of the BigBoys. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have a similar content approval process.

Re:Why?

[Hadlock]

You could have saved a lot of time and just said "consoles are sold as a loss leader" and then linked to one of the literally thousands of articles on the internet, rather than explaining this in great detail. Do you really think someone on slashdot hasn't heard this same story 200 times already? If I had mod points right now I would mod you to oblivion as redundant.

Re:Why?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

You'd mod me redundant for explaining rather than just posting a link? Wow. I'd mod you troll.

That's the point

[i kan reed]

Microsoft has said that they don't want their reputation as a retailer ruined by games requiring numerous patches that not all users can get. They say they consider it a fine on premature releases. It's also to "encourage" dlc to be charged for through their store system, so they can get a cut. If you release the content through a patch then use some sort of exterior store to unlock it, MS doesn't get a piece of the action. Part of the idea is good: companies pay for the "deliver first, make it work later" attitude that has been a little to prevalent. Part of it is money grubbing. I'm pretty neutral on the concept.

Re:That's the point

[CanHasDIY]

They say they consider it a fine on premature releases.

Careful, lest you give hookers any ideas...

Re:That's the point

[spopepro]

I was just talking with my boss about microsoft support and found out that for our exchange problems, a tech support call is $250. If they tell you where to find a setting, $250. If they spend 2 weeks and have multiple techs on a call, $250. I came to a realization that it wasn't so much about the fact that MS wanted to nickle and dime for tech support as much as they want to impose a penalty for not RTFM. This sounds like it's sort of in the same spirit.

Re:That's the point

[Nemyst]

Indie devs don't have the luxury of being able to afford thorough QA. More often than not the team consists of an art guy and a programmer who set some money aside to work on their project full-time for a few months. They'll do their best to find and fix bugs, but holding them to the same standards as AAA multi-million projects is entirely stupid.

There's a reason the indie scene is thriving on PC.

Re:That's the point

[Lumpy]

They also charge $250.00 to give you the URL for the beta patch that fixes a bug in their Piece of Crap called Exchange. I have a couple of those patches that NEVER LEFT BETA and the problem still exists in exchange 2003, 2007 and 2010 when you have Exchange servers using a Tiered storage model for a massive email system.

MSFT support is a double edge sword. they cut you whenever possible.

Re:That's the point

[Missing.Matter]

That's why there's a channel for indie devs to submit their projects that go through a peer review process instead of the standard certification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Live_Indie_Games

Re:That's the point

[dreemernj]

I wonder when it became an issue to patch games? I remember seeing arcade games change as updates were released for them in the arcade. They couldn't push out patches to N64 and PSX games, but they still did different versions of them. They'd produce a batch. Update the game to fix issues. Then the next batch would have a slightly different version.

It's how games have tended to work for a while. I guess it's probably online play (which I would guess tends to require matching versions to work well) and the fact that people see the download happen vs going to the arcade and finding a game had been updated to use version 1.1 rom chips instead of 1.0.

Re:That's the point

[Anaerin]

I don't know about now, but the way MS support used to work is that you were charged for filing a report, but if the report was a bug and a new/not publicly available patch was required your fee was refunded or you got a "support event" that you could use instead of being charged. It was meant as a way of giving people a financial incentive to actually RTFDocumentation, and/or to seek help through one of their free alternatives, like MSDN, MS newsgroups, support fora and the like.

Re:That's the point

[flimflammer]

Lets be honest with ourselves. XBLIG is definitely a step in the right direction but Microsoft treats it little more than a novelty. You are required to use C#/XNA with the .NET Compact Framework, something never designed for the kind of programming you will inevitably be doing and as such you will be fighting it every step of the way. Microsoft put absolutely no thought in how people will find your games, and there's absolutely no quality control. I've dealt with XBLIG and outside of a few miracle games, it's pretty much nothing more than a festering pit. Fun to work with for your own ends, but you better not actually consider making anything from it.

If Microsoft created a system like XBox Live Arcade that was more open to indie devs like Steam, and didn't pidgeonhole you into C#/XNA with the compact framework, then the platform would be so much more appealing. One of these days, I think Microsoft will get it. I think they'll even get it before their competitors. I just hope it happens soon.

Re:That's the point

[Missing.Matter]

I've dealt with XBLIG and outside of a few miracle games, it's pretty much nothing more than a festering pit.

That's the side effect of making something accessible to more people. In general, the things people create are worthless and all around pretty terrible. For some reason /. seems to treat "indie" as a wholesome mark of quality in juxtaposition to the manufactured games from big firms. The reality is when you ask amateurs and hobbyists to come up with a game, 90% of what comes back is garbage. Games like Minecraft are one in a million and the quality of these gems should not be synonymous with "indie"

Re:That's the point

[flimflammer]

I don't disagree with you but that's not really contrary to anything I've said either. I agree that if you take the average indie developer and they make a game, it's likely going to be a bit of a mess. However they don't need to just let anyone put a game into the marketplace. Microsoft should keep XBLIG, but they should expand XBLA to encompass more indie developers that would otherwise be stuck in XBLIG. More developers should be able to pitch an idea and get the approval from Microsoft as long as the idea is solid and they have something to show for it, because currently you need to have nothing short of a best seller with a diamond encrusted proven track record before Microsoft will even look in your general direction. That shouldn't be the case.

If Microsoft took some notes from Steam regarding approval of indie titles, the service would be far greater for the developers, the gamers, and for Microsoft.

I think you put too little faith in indie games. No indie game needs to be as popular as Minecraft to be a financial success for everyone involved.

Re:That's the point

[Kalriath]

because currently you need to have nothing short of a best seller with a diamond encrusted proven track record before Microsoft will even look in your general direction

Or something they can use to hammer Kinect at more people. Those get their attention too.

Re:That's the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft don't actually charge when the bug is in there product. call fee in most cases is refunded for product bugs.

If only...

[Megaweapon]

Microsoft would pay small rebates for every patch for Windows they released...

Re:If only...

[Guppy06]

I care a bit more about unpatched OS exploits than unpatched game exploits.

Re:If only...

[ArundelCastle]

I care a bit more about unpatched OS exploits than unpatched game exploits.

I think that's debatable. You have some control over which websites you visit and what software you run.
You have absolutely no control about who winds up in your ranked matchmaking lobby. That is a core feature of what people spend $50+ on a multiplayer game for.

(Sure you can stick to private matches, if you have 15 other friends who all play at the same time you do, and don't care about public ranking.)

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

So then I should get a rebate in life wasted for Linux patches released, cockbag.

Quality Control

[adisakp]

I work in the video game industry but this opinion is only my own. I personally don't think the costs are unreasonable.

Microsoft has a pretty stringent testing requirement for patches. It's not as simple as slapping up a new binary to download. It costs them money to test patches against technical requirements. There is bandwidth involved for downloading patches as well. The developers have to pay for the bandwidth and testing costs. Charging for patches also discourages sloppy software with lots of patching after the fact. Not all XBOX 360's even have hard drives so patches have to be relatively minor and fit on memory cards if necessary.

Re:Quality Control

[trongey]

Microsoft has a pretty stringent testing requirement for patches. It's not as simple as slapping up a new binary to download.

Clearly, you're only referring to patches provided by companies outside of Microsoft.

Re:Quality Control

[Derosian]

So you are doing what has already been done by the company releasing the patch then charging them for it? I can understand bandwidth costs but 40,000 is outrageous.

Re:Quality Control

[HapSlappy_2222]

I dunno, not saying I'm for or against the $40k fee, but the bandwidth is definitely not negligible... if you consider how many people own an Xbox 360, and then consider what percentage of them will need to patch the game, all those $0.0001 (which doesn't seem like an accurate number, even though you put "exactly") 5Mb files start to add up.

Also, like many others have said, this encourages developers to spend the time getting the game right in the first place instead of rushing to market. Software development is very difficult, but patching live systems is a terrifyingly dangerous task; pushing patches and running them through QA sandboxes is easy, but pushing a patch to a live, production machine (like my Xbox 360) had better fucking not happen without rigorous testing from every company involved (MS is gonna have different interests to in testing than Mr. Developer is).

I guess many of us believe that a small dev SHOULD be "ripped off" (or penalized) for releasing shoddy software, and that this policy is actually logically sound. My *only* question is whether Microsoft is qualified to judge what shoddy software is.

Re:Quality Control

[HapSlappy_2222]

Hmm. Guess I did end up saying I was for the fee. Go figure.

Re:Quality Control

[bug1]

Charging for patches also discourages sloppy software with lots of patching after the fact.

Charging for patches also discourages propoer software maintenace techniques.

Team Fortess 2 was released over 4 years ago, its ongoing popularity on the PC is mostly due to its good maintenace technices, either bugfixes or updated content coming out every few days. Idiotic patch policy like M$'s is why it failed on XBox.

A culture that belives patches are a sign that something is wrong is ... i dont even have the words...

Re:Quality Control

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet Valve has no problem patching TF2 on 360. In fact the shitty class patch they rolled in the with floor-glitch/skywalk-glitch patch pretty much killed the game. When all they really needed to do was roll some maps up as DLC.

I worked for Odyssey software back in the day...

[Anonymous Coward]

We didn't need API's for physics. We were kids then. There was a coder then that was a genius in his day. It's been a while, It was the early 90s. Back when
writing code for a nintendo meant just compiling code and downloading to a cartridge that plugged into a conventional nintendo. We coded for amiga too.
ahh... and the original port of Mad Dog McCree. I tell you if had to pay $40k to code for a target platform, we just wouldn't do it. We would write a killer app for another platform that will help propel our games platform popularity. I think what happened is game coders are tied to the API, and no longer write hardcore code. Because if Microsoft was screwing me over I'd write code for an alternate platform. I'd write code that was so damn good it would actually encourage gamers to buy the platform my game is written for. Now Microsoft is locking the xbox so you can't sell your old game to gamestop and buy something else. well I hope this kills the the xbox.

I think it's time to develop a killer open gaming platform. The technology is here to do it. Imagine a world of no more DRM.
I

CDNs cost money too

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked on a MMO at one point. Close to release we pushed out the game to our CDN solution. Every time we needed to push a patch it was $25,000 to get them to spread it out over their servers. This $40,000 figure is not far off the mark for the real cost Microsoft would incur to farm out a patch for a service that millions visit every day.

Re:CDNs cost money too

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the $40,000 is a standard fee or if it's sized according to the number of sales. For a big AAA title with millions of players $40,000 might not be enough, but for an indie game with under 50,000 sales it's probably an overcharge.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[elrous0]

I think it's time to develop a killer open gaming platform.

Attempts to develop an open console or handheld have been tried many times. But no one has ever succeeded at it. Good luck.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[thomasw_lrd]

That's great.

1. Develop bad ass gaming hardware
2. Market it, so everybody buys it.
3. Profit.

No ???? in that equations. Unless you consider both 1 and 2 the ????.

The very first time we hear the word "patch"...

[Anonymous Coward]

in relation to a PS3 or XBoc 360 game, we're taking the console back to the store. Filled with our shit.

Seriously, how did it become even remotely acceptable for a console game to need patches in the first place? It used to be that you'd need to do a recall to fix a broken game. If anything, $40000 isn't enough.

Re:The very first time we hear the word "patch"...

[g0bshiTe]

I blame the dolts that aren't able to adequately tell if their pc can run a game based on the boxes listed minimum sys reqs.

Re:The very first time we hear the word "patch"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because it's not like companies have ever lied about the minimum requirements of their game... Sorry, but not everyone wants to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars to rice up their gaming "rig" (ugh... that term sounds so fucking stupid when people say it) just to play a game.

Console patches have led to relaxed standards

[LordZardoz]

In the PS2 / Gamecube era, patching a console game just did not happen much. It was the XBox that introduced the notion by having a built in ethernet port, the Xbox Live service, and the built in hard drive. On the plus side this has led to certain egregious problems being fixed.

On the downside, it has become a crutch. Getting through Lotcheck used to be more difficult. It is still an unholy pain in the ass, but the big publishers can afford to drop a patch, and the revenue gained by being able to hit a launch date mandated by a marketing campaign will make up for it. If the company is big enough (EA, Ubisoft), and the title has the potential to move the needle for hardware sales, a great deal of completely terrible bugs can be forgiven if a launch day patch is forthcoming.

Smaller developers need to anticipate that they wont be able to patch the game at launch simply due to the financial constraints though.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:Console patches have led to relaxed standards

[drinkypoo]

On the downside, it has become a crutch.

Amen! The quality of console game software has gone way way down since patching became standard and I'm tired of it.

Cry me a river

[Anonymous Coward]

It is sooo profitable to develop for consoles, much more profitable than on a normal pc! so go on nothing to see here ....

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Oh, it costs a great deal more than 40K to licence a mainstream xbox 360 game. That was the cost of EACH PATCH.

The thing is, yes, gaming used to be cheaper. Uh... so? It used to be you could make a video game with 2 programmers and 4 artists, Doom and Mortal Kombat both had barely more than that. But these days? 50+ developers for some projects? And you're targeting a gaming console that is sold at a loss? You have to understand the business model involved. Consoles are consoles, not PCs. (as much as I might wish otherwise).

hook up you computer to your tv

[Anonymous Coward]

hook up you computer to your tv and play the game with a xbox controller, problem solved.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[Zaphod The 42nd]

This is really just a bunch of rambling, you've got no cohesive point. Because of modern physics APIs... games cost more... so you're stuck on one platform... because of DRM?

Yes, DRM is bad... and... some other things you said are points too... but none of it makes sense together.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[InsaneLampshade]

I think it's time to develop a killer open gaming platform.

...you mean like a PC running linux? Ok, sorted, now we'll just wait for the games to roll in...................

games also needs mods / user maps and PC rocks

[Joe_Dragon]

games also needs mods / user maps and the PC rocks at that!

No ports to XBLIG

[tepples]

If you develop with Microsoft XNA the fees are all much less. But you also get special restrictions. *shrug*

One of them being that you can't have characters speaking a constructed language. Another being that you can't port a game from another platform; you have to write it from scratch in C#. I've been told that the best-practice workaround for the latter is to develop single-player games solely for other platforms and multiplayer games solely for Xbox 360.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is a joke, right? There were numerous buggy games released 10 and 20 years ago. This notion that buggy software is something new is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Back in the DOS says it was not uncommon for games to crash the OS frequently due to bugs. For example, games like Duke3d, Doom, Quake, etc has numerous bugs that were squashed when their source code was released. There are plenty of shit programmers today (see java weenies and ruby tards as prime examples) but there were plenty of programmers of old who should never have been writing code.

Seriously?

[g0bshiTe]

This makes sense, since requiring just one patch could massively cut into the profits for a company.

This makes sense for smaller houses but a title that rakes in more than a million in sales on the first day of launch this wouldn't be that much of an issue. If your studio is making niche games then yeah.

Well that explains a lot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear FSM!@! So that explains Valves comments on why TF2 on Xbox dose not get all the updates and stuff pc gets..

Re:Well that explains a lot.

[Anonymous Coward]

They've done updates and DLC for 360 games before (Left 4 Dead series, and Portal 2, for example), but they've explained two things on their blog:

1) They didn't feel right charging customers for large amounts of DLC. LFD2 has gotten ports of old LFD1 maps for the past year or so, but only on the PC. They've been beta testing and balancing these along with a new map, Cold Stream, and said they'd release it all as one DLC pack for consoles in the future, instead of releasing a half-dozen maps as individual downloads. Since TF2 is making its money of off their item shop, with over a hundred items, and this list frequently expanding, I don't see how they could easily integrate this to the existing XBL storefront.

2) If you listen to the developer commentary in some of their games, they occasionally mention the constraints of porting the game to consoles, which often have less beefy system specs than their targetted PCs (which themselves are traditionally at the low-end of what most PC gamers at the time had). More expansive and detailed levels, along with the GBs of data for alternate weapons and hats (which would also have to be loaded into and out of RAM, as opposed to the existing 9 player models of two colors each and stock equipment), means that console players will probably never get anything more for TF2, maybe bug fixes if they're lucky.

40k is NOT much for in a console game budget...

[Anonymous Coward]

$40k to certify and deploy a patch is really not that much in terms of a game budget. Most third party tools and licenses cost around this much and the average development budget is over $10million these days (marketing budgets are often much, much more!).

The cost of becoming a licensed developer (not an indie developer, but full fledged developer) plus a few development and test kits is very expensive so Microsoft knows that these developers have deep pockets. As mentioned in previous comments, this fee is partially to cover their own costs but mostly to prevent developers from abusing the system and pushing out patch after patch.

This fee is also not set in stone and is negotiable depending on what publisher you are and what sort of game you're making.

Re:40k is NOT much for in a console game budget...

[Anonymous Coward]

The budget for XBLA titles are nowhere near $10 million.

C# only

[tepples]

So how does one translate an existing game's code into C# so that one can release through XBLIG? Sure, I can accept that programmers would have to write the view layer (graphics, sound, input) from scratch for each platform. But I thought one of the benefits of a model-view separation was that different platforms with different view needs could share the model layer (physics, collision, AI) code. The requirement that all games be written in C# breaks this. (Yes, C#; there's no Emit for dynamic languages or P/Invoke for C++.)

Re:C# only

[Rockoon]

So how does one translate an existing game's code into C# so that one can release through XBLIG?

If its an existing game then you are already moving outside the 'indie' circle. You already have profits from a different platform and want to get profits from the 360 too. I'm not going to cry a river for professional developers that are making lots of money, regardless of how you want to paint XBLIG requirements.

Re:C# only

[tepples]

If its an existing game then you are already moving outside the 'indie' circle.

OK, let me rephrase: Say the game was successfully prototyped in Python (using a toolkit such as Pygame or Pyglet), but this prototype was never sold to the public because the conventional wisdom is that gamepad-oriented games don't sell on PCs. Now how does this prototype get translated to C#?

You already have profits from a different platform

Not if the existing game was a Free or freeware proof-of-concept and one wants to extend it to a paid version.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

[EXTomar]

Quality control is fine but then why take weeks and cost so much to get a rejection due to bugs or low quality? When a game crashes I don't believe many blame Microsoft but instead point fingers at the ISV (example: Bethesda). Why do this? To strictly control and squeeze all the money they can from the supply chain where quality seems to not be secondary.

Instead this seems like "The Law of Unintended Consequences". In an effort to control the system Microsoft has put in place a barrier to entry, they've excluded an entire class of high quality software. Small games and games that thrive on frequent updates don't fit well into XBox Live which has been lamented by many but seems to be just as well since others can make software work on other platforms and pocket a lot more of the profits.

I've got an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about publishing your game on the pc platform eh ?
No fee for publishing, no fee for patches, you can make download content free or otherwise for your customer base to enjoy etc....
Instead you go in bed with the devil, what did you expect would happen ? You got fucked plain and simple, so don't come crying afterwards like how Microsoft is so heartless etc...

Re:I've got an idea...

[shaunbr]

No fee for publishing, no fee for patches, but a 98% piracy rate on PC makes the $40k to validate a patch sound cheap. The cost might sound high, but at least the majority of the people who are playing console games actually buy the damn things instead of torrenting them. If I were a developer, I'd stick with the platform that isn't being crushed by piracy (hint: the PC ain't it).

Re:I've got an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

No fee for publishing, no fee for patches, but a 98% piracy rate on PC makes the $40k to validate a patch sound cheap. The cost might sound high, but at least the majority of the people who are playing console games actually buy the damn things instead of torrenting them. If I were a developer, I'd stick with the platform that isn't being crushed by piracy (hint: the PC ain't it).

Seriously, how about justifying the 98% piracy rate on pc ?
Or did you take that figure out of your ass mpaa/riaa style ?

Lets be real, piracy is on pc just as you find it on consoles. Take a look at the most torrented games, they are fucking CONSOLE games. And by the way not every software developer wages a losing war against its customers. Gog.com certainly doesn't, and those that developed The Witcher 1/2 certainly don't.

Re:I've got an idea...

[Cimexus]

98% piracy on PC? That can't possibly be even close to right. The popularity of Steam alone would attest to that (and far more people still buy boxed games than buy off Steam, given that Steam isn't available in all regions and currencies etc.)

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[Soporific]

Isn't the PC an open gaming platform?

~S

Re:Well

[g0bshiTe]

+5 Right on.

Since programs were first run on a computer there have been bugs, they continue to this day in most games be they some random video glitch or full blown crashes to desktop (pc gamer here, one that suffers Dead Island crashes atm). Bugs are everywhere.

PC: the fourth console

[tepples]

I can think of one way to work around Microsoft's perceived technical advantage on its own console. It involves building your own brand of small-form-factor PC and marketing it as if it were the fourth console. I wonder why Valve hasn't already done this to promote its Steam store.

Re:PC: the fourth console

[filthpickle]

I have had that same thought about a Valve console. All I can figure is that they just think that there isn't any money in hardware...and that it would be too hard to break into the market.

They are doing pretty well...hard to argue with success. I just worry that PC gaming is ultimately on the way out (hope I am wrong).

Re:PC: the fourth console

[tepples]

All I can figure is that they just think that there isn't any money in hardware

Some companies think there's money in hardware. Otherwise, Acer wouldn't be making the Xbox 360-sized Aspire X1.

and that it would be too hard to break into the market.

Perhaps one solution is to partner with a well-known maker of smaller-form-factor PCs.

Re:PC: the fourth console

[Rockoon]

I have had that same thought about a Valve console. All I can figure is that they just think that there isn't any money in hardware...and that it would be too hard to break into the market.

Valve's issue is that their entire portfolio requires someone elses operating system.

Re:PC: the fourth console

[Kalriath]

Because if Valve becomes a first party 'console' manufacturer, they lose 2 entire platforms on which they can publish their games? (By which I mean PS3 and Xbox 360 - ever seen a Sony first party game on Xbox, or a Microsoft first party game on PS3? Me neither).

Re:PC: the fourth console

[tepples]

Wouldn't that be the easiest part to solve? Valve could port Source for Mac OS X to Linux.

Re:PC: the fourth console

[tepples]

I've seen a few Microsoft games on Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS. But then Microsoft doesn't really have a handheld platform designed to operate without $600 per year cellular service; it killed both Pocket PC and Zune.

Re:PC: the fourth console

[drinkypoo]

Question is, what does Valve bring to such a collaboration? Anyone can install Steam on their Windows PC. Getting it preloaded by multiple vendors with the rest of the crapware seems like a more useful goal for them.

Re:PC: the fourth console

[Hadlock]

The fact is, if you look at the hardware survey, something like 70% of users use something like four different intel processors, 5-6 AMD processors, 8-10 video cards, and 3-4 display resolutions. It's not perfect and there are a lot of potential combinations, but for the most part many of those are just slow/medium/high speed versions of the same product. Intel has slowly but surely been shrinking the total number of consumer processors they make. They're down to about 4 SKUs that system builders use, and then the i3 models they sell to large manufacturers. Sure, consoles are very specific, but the number of companies making the chips people program things for isn't 1/10th of what it used to be. In 1996 you could order a 486 chip from no less than 10 manufacturers out of a Tiger Direct catalog.

Re:PC: the fourth console

[Kalriath]

I don't know why, but neither Microsoft nor Sony seem to consider the Wii (or anything Nintendo makes) as competition. I guess they just see Nintendo's hardware (Wii, DS) as serving a different target consumer, which I can sort of agree with - every Wii owner I know also has either a PS3 or an Xbox 360.

Re:PC: the fourth console

[Rockoon]

..and how does that solve the problem? Did you think the thousands of games on Steam use the Source engine?

Big screens

[tepples]

Consoles are consoles, not PCs. (as much as I might wish otherwise).

Then why do only consoles tend to have large (over 24") monitors connected to them? I'd drop consoles in an instant if developers started making PC games that could use several game controllers, but for various reasons, it appears there aren't enough people willing to connect a PC to a TV big enough to fit two to four people around it. Nor are the kind of people who used to crowd around a 19" bedroom TV willing to crowd around a 21" PC monitor for some even odder reason.

Re:Big screens

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Split-screen games are pretty hard to come by even on consoles these days. Most gaming is done over the internet. I'm trying to think of how many major titles this year included split-screen or some other type of local multi-player. The wii supports it, but the wii is all kinds of gimmicky so it has a different feel going on from mainstream gaming. How many other modern games do? I guess Modern Warfare lets you do 2 player split screen still? I don't think Battlefield does.... I guess Gears of War does... Although, hell, most console games are single-player regardless.

If nothing else, you can install Dolphin and play Wii games in beautiful high resolution on your PC :) You can hook as many game controllers or wiimotes up to the pc as the game supports.

Also, SOME PC games do support it, its just extremely rare because there's so little market for it. I know Dynasty Warriors on PC lets you play split-screen, and Left4Dead does as well.

Re:Big screens

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of Xbox 360 games have split-screen, especially the most popular multi-player games such as:

Gears
Halo
CoD
Forza
L4D

Along with a massive pile of XBLA titles.

Re:Big screens

[CtownNighrider]

One of the few big name games that supports 4 person local multiplayer (2 for local campaign). Bungie has been very amendment about keeping that functionality so its a great party game.

Re:Big screens

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Did you mean to say "Halo" ? (taking a guess, since you mentioned Bungie). Kinda left out the most important part of your post, sir.

And I said "This year". There are plenty of examples of split-screen games, especially on older consoles before live. Xbox had lots of them, N64 had lots of them, etc. It wasn't until late xbox early 360 generation that internet became ubiquitous for consoles. Halo didn't come out this year, unless you mean the remake of Halo 1, which was more of a graphical update than a full game. The point still stands, and I MYSELF pointed out several examples in my post that there ARE a few, so good job. I already mentioned MW3 and Gears of War and admitted that there are others. So good jorb.

The point is they're rare now.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[tepples]

Yes, the PC is far more open than a console. But though HDTVs have PC inputs, next to nobody uses them outside the Slashdot-reading geek crowd. So PC games end up optimized for the desk instead of the sofa.

player 2 must use a separate copy of the game

[tepples]

hook up you computer to your tv and play the game with a xbox controller

I own a pair of Xbox 360 controllers. A lot of PC games won't recognize both of them. Why? Greed: they want families to buy two copies.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[Anaerin]

So, how exactly did you fix bugs in games after they were shipped? You couldn't? Then you know nothing about what this entire conversation is about. Oh, and it's not MS that's locking the XBox, it's the games publishers, because they want to kill the second hand market.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[Anonymous Coward]

I was actually confused when I went to a friends house and his PC *wasn't* connected to his TV.

"Hey, I brought with me those blu ray rips you wanted, lets put one on and watch it, wait what, why are we going your bedroom, don't you only have a 15" screen there, can't we watch it on the TV? What do you mean there's no PC connected to your TV?? But then how do you watch Youtube from your sofa? What do you mean you don't?!!!"

Having an actual desk based PC (outside of an office environment) just seems abnormal to me now.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

So you weren't willing to pay money for Skyrim, but you still wanted to play it... honestly, who cares what (non-paying) 'customer's like you think? Buy a copy, *then* feel free to bitch.

Neutral?

[goldcd]

I'm all for it.
Multi-million dollar marketing, forcing release into a window is not always conducive to a completed product getting shipped.
I presume $40k is the only possible reason that somebody might decide to delay a much-fanfared release until it's ready.
Looking at it the other way, if patching was free, I suspect a shit-load more shoddy stuff would appear.

I'm not having a go at iterative development (minecraft), DLC etc - and I appreciate it when a publisher/developer pushes out a patch to correct an issue that they only came across after release.. Merely pointing out that cost-free patching would undoubtedly create a buggier experience for me.

Where did this number come from?

[afabbro]

The sole evidence presented is the statement "I mean, it costs $40,000 to put up a patch – we can’t afford that!". The second article simply refers to the first.

What is this $40K? Are developers literally getting an invoice for $40K from Microsoft, or is that one of those "that's X number of hours @ so much per developer hour" kind of multiplications? If it's an invoice, is it really a flat fee in that nice round number or is he just pulling this number out of the air?

For a bunch of people who allegedly are alternative non-mainstream revolutionary wannabes, Slashdotters sure take everything they read in blogs at face value.

erm because

[goldcd]

I completely fail to see how they'd manage to undercut every single existing PC/component manufacturer out there.
Always thought they were missing a trick by not embracing benchmarking though. Your PC gets a steam score/analysis and it tells you how a particular game should run on your system before you buy it.
They could then make a few dollars off certifying platforms - i.e. you buy all these bits, it should be fine - but if you buy this complete Alienware system, then we can tell you right now, you'll get 60fps with everything racked to max.
Probably isn't too possible to be accurate in the world of ever changing drivers - but they could surely certify a few platforms (and get steam to maintain the latest drivers on them).

Re:erm because

[devilspgd]

I completely fail to see how they'd manage to undercut every single existing PC/component manufacturer out there.

If nothing else, they'd be able to buy and build in bulk, without adding a ton of parts that aren't needed for their particular design. They also could aim to be revenue neutral, making up the difference in game sales.

OK, Let us compare.

[goldcd]

Please look at a recent game - and then tell me how you'd just knock this up in a bit of machine code, more efficiently.
Most people don't write hard-core code, well mainly as somebody else has done it for them, allowing them to get on with something more productive.

Subbing can be risky as well

[Riddler Sensei]

Mind you, this $40k is the SUBMISSION fee. It is entirely possible that whatever patch you submitted just does not pass. If that happens you don't get your money back - fix what they cited and resubmit, cash and all.

I worked for a videogame publishing company for a period of time and we had one submission that actually failed due to botched paperwork by someone higher up. This, of course, led to a week of office wide griping about how a fuck up that cost the company more than a year of our wages was done by someone who got paid more than triple we did and is still around after the fact (soon before this incident someone was fired for accidentally sending an email building wide...). But what can you do? There is a reason I, and most people, leave that company with no intention of going back.

Re:Subbing can be risky as well

[Stan92057]

There was nothing in that article stating the 40 grand was for submission fees. Where did you get your information from?

Re:Subbing can be risky as well

[Riddler Sensei]

From my aforementioned time at a videogame publisher. Not saying that there are ADDITIONAL fees if the patch passes submission, just saying that if they find your patch to be subpar then they throw it back at you, no refunds.

Bedroom TVs

[tepples]

Most gaming is done over the internet.

So if two kids living in the same house want to play together, what should they do? Must one go to a friend's house just to play over the Internet with the other?

If nothing else, you can install Dolphin and play Wii games in beautiful high resolution on your PC :)

I thought PC DVD-ROM drives couldn't read the not-quite-DVD format of Nintendo optical discs.

Also, SOME PC games do support it, its just extremely rare because there's so little market for it.

What caused there to be so little market for it, when desktop PC monitors are about as big as bedroom TVs used to be?

Re:Bedroom TVs

[Zaphod The 42nd]

The size of your monitor has nothing to do with it. Gaming between friends or siblings on a couch is fun, but if you actually look at the gamers of the world, and what they spend their time doing, almost NONE of them actually get on a couch with a friend and play split-screen these days. Nobody plays sitting next to each other, you'd rather have your own chair and your own system and your own screen. Then you can't cheat and watch the other player. And your screen isn't at some ridiculous 16:4 aspect ratio because its split in half horizontally. People simply don't play much split-screen in this world today. We only did it because thats all there was, the only way to play 4 player goldeneye was to get 3 of your buddies over to your house. It was fun, yeah, but it was massively inconvenient to do on a regular basis. Split-screen co-op is usually a rarity, maybe something that happens once every 4 months at a party. And if its a party, you're going to have more than 4 people, and they're going to be trading off, and if the game is hardcore or doesn't have save points... It just doesn't work that well. It isn't really done.

I feel for you, I do. I like co-op myself. But there just isn't much of a market for it, and you have to accept that people are going to spend money making products for things that have an audience. There might be one guy out there who really wants to play a game where you rape dinosaurs, but since there's no mainstream market for that, no serious game studio would ever pick it up. Its BUSINESS. Economics 101. Capitalism. Hm?

Re:Bedroom TVs

[tepples]

Nobody plays sitting next to each other, you'd rather have your own chair and your own system and your own screen.

"Would rather" provided they have the money. Parents tend not to have the money for multiple gaming PCs; instead they buy one gaming PC or console and give the rest homework-and-Facebook PCs with some grossly underpowered Intel integrated graphics processor. (Ever wondered why they call it "GMA"? Graphics My Ass.) Parents also aren't big fans of buying the same game three times, once for each kid.

Then you can't cheat and watch the other player.

How is it "cheating" when the two players are on the same team? Or how is it "cheating" to watch the other player in a fighting game like Street Fighter or Smash Bros., which like Chess and Go are games of perfect information? You appear to be limiting yourself to player-versus-player modes in first-person shooters.

And if its a party, you're going to have more than 4 people, and they're going to be trading off

Trading off has worked well at my extended family's annual reunion from 2000 to 2010 with the various iterations of Super Smash Bros. series. I'm just frustrated that smaller indie devs can't get in on this.

I like co-op myself. But there just isn't much of a market for it

In watching my little cousin play Call of Duty series, I noticed that he plays a lot of team deathmatch, capture the flag, and Nazi Zombies. These modes are co-op, unlike free-for-all deathmatch.

Re:Bedroom TVs

[Zaphod The 42nd]

You completely missed the point and cherry picked a few arguments that you have a problem with while completely ignoring the overall message. There's no point trying to explain anything further to you.

Re:Bedroom TVs

[tepples]

I admit that I did miss your point. So please allow me another guess: was your point that it has become the fashion to play FPS and RTS, genres that truly benefit from Internet play, to the exclusion of other genres?

Re:Bedroom TVs

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Thats a very large part of it. But you can play FPS games on split-screen goldeneye being one of my examples, and a perfect example of being able to cheat by looking players screens. It only works for split-screen, if you have a shared-screen game then obviously you can't cheat, there isn't a second screen to look at, there's no secret information. But on split-screen games there is. Unfortunately, shared-screen really, REALLY limits what you can do in multiplayer gaming, which is why we see so little of it. Games that do have shared-screen multiplayer DO have local multiplayer, from what I've seen. Its just that those games are super, super rare. Like I said, most games aren't even multiplayer, and of those that are, its a tiny subset that would work for shared-screen. Only fighting games, board games, and party games really let you do that. There's a lot more than FPS or RTS that don't work that way either. hack n slash RPGs work, but not MMORPGs. Racing games need to be split-screen.

Looking at a list of games that came out last year, next to none of them would work as shared screen. So you have the option of split-screen, which annoys most people and would go unused, or you can do internet. You're expected to do internet anyways, thats what everybody wants, so developing split-screen is a nice to have, and most games have all kinds of features and nice to haves that the developers would love to put in, but they don't have the time or the resources.

Again, I love playing a good fighting game on a couch with friends, smash bros is tons of fun, and when I was in high school we all played halo (the first one) split-screen, 4 player battles.

But it simply isn't done very often anymore. We did it out of neccesity back then, it was the only option for multiplayer. But for day to day gaming, internet is so much more convenient. You can still play with the same people, and you can all just connect from your homes. The mainstream hardcore gamer rarely or never plays that way. I'm not condemning it, I love doing it, but other people don't seem keen on it anymore. And the money follows the customers. Trying to remember where the article was that I read awhile ago on the subject of how little people play local multiplayer, but its slipping my mind.

Re:Well

[flimflammer]

He was probably just looking for a reason to justify his need to pirate modern video games.

Get your head out of the damn sand.

[ArundelCastle]

It makes a whole lot more sense to put the effort into getting the right code onto the disc before it ships.

Stop making sense. It's never going to be that way again and we all bloody well know it. What you're doing is the equivalent of telling kids to eat their vegetables. They're going to flip you off and go back to the entertainment center and cheap junk food in their bedroom.

I downloaded and played the Mass Effect 3 demo today.
In the Options menu under "Online" there is an "Upload Gameplay Feedback" switch. It says, and I quote:

Turn this on to provide BioWare with valuable feedback on how you play the game. This helps us fix bugs and improve future content.

Since the demo is a 30 minute vertical slice, and the retail code HAS GONE GOLD, I believe it's safe to assume the same option will be in the full retail release.

The ME3 franchise has one of the largest budgets in gaming history. The industry just flipped us off. Patches are the reality now.

Care to try a workable idea?

[ArundelCastle]

How about publishing your game on the pc platform eh ?
No fee for publishing, no fee for patches, you can make download content free or otherwise for your customer base to enjoy etc....

And no fee for the millions of players that "can click 4 buttons over here" to pirate it to enjoy it.

While Steam and 360 declare approximately the same number of registered accounts, Steam just hit 5 million concurrent online users across all games. Xbox LIVE has 2 to 3 million people *playing just the latest Call of Duty* after its release. From a marketplace standpoint, PC isn't the big leagues.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[Kalriath]

Imagine a world of no more DRM.

I just did. It was quite boring, because there was nothing but indie games in it.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[Kalriath]

Why would you (buffering) watch Youtube (buffering) from your (buffering) sofa?

(Also, imagine this post HUGELY pixelated. Like 1cm squares).

Re:Well

[Kalriath]

There are still bugs I have to play around daily. One of them required me to download a bunch of audio files from some unofficial source so that a dialog scene would work and I could continue in the game (some dude held up in the theive's guild wouldn't open the door until he completed his dialog).

That bug doesn't exist if you actually buy the fucking game you cheap bastard.

Your argument is invalid.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[mjwx]

Oh, it costs a great deal more than 40K to licence a mainstream xbox 360 game. That was the cost of EACH PATCH.

The thing is, yes, gaming used to be cheaper.

PC gaming still is cheaper, even for mutli-million dollar crapfests like Modern Snorefare. take Battlefeild 3 for example (a craptacular addition to what was once a good series).
PC - 30 GBP
PS3 - 38 GBP
Xbox - 38 GBP

That's a difference of US$13 between console and PC for the same game. PC games also tend to drop in price a lot faster meaning if you wait 3-4 months, you get the same game for 1/2 to 1/3 the price. PC's, higher cost of entry, lower TCO, in the end, PC gaming is cheaper then console gaming.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Nonono, this has nothing to do with the cost of a game at retail. We were talking about the cost to develop. Games are allowed to cost massively more to develop and barely more at retail because they're more mainstream, more sales means less cost per sale. The larger scope of modern games and the more advanced graphics require far more detail to implement. Yes, there's a difference between pc and console cost... but that is an entirely different discussion.

Weird

[Bensam123]

The ideology in threads on here is quite weird honestly. Either they're for the money or they think Microsoft should just stuff it as they already charge a licensing fee and subscriptions, which I sorta agree with... But what about actually charging for resources they use? A fixed rate like this is mind boggling for small companies and indies and for big businesses that produce titles like CoD it's a steal. Smells a lot like subsidizing bigger companies.

Telling people to make it right the first time is pure BS as well. 'Do better then you're currently doing' is stupid ideological BS people spout when they have absolutely no idea what's happening below the table. People make mistakes, it happens, some are careless, some cutting corners, but dealing with it is why we have patches in the first place and part of why web browsers switched to essentially streaming updates.

Re:Weird

[Anonymous Coward]

Telling people to make it right the first time is pure BS as well. 'Do better then you're currently doing' is stupid ideological BS people spout when they have absolutely no idea what's happening below the table. People make mistakes, it happens, some are careless, some cutting corners, but dealing with it is why we have patches in the first place and part of why web browsers switched to essentially streaming updates.

i'd say $40.000 per patch is a pretty good incentive for small developers to cut less corners and invest in better QA. Serious bugs (that need patching) are not some natural event that happens with a fixed probability no matter what you do.

The extremely low cost of patching over the internet has lead to the idea that you can spend less resources on looking for bugs which might or might not exist before you finalize the "gold master" and instead focus on fixing bugs quickly after release as they get reported. This may be more efficient for the developer but results in a worse customer experience. In the days of physical disks minor patches had to be issued via game magazine disks which was considerable hassle (and did only reach a small fraction of your customers while the rest was busy spreading word-of-mouth about your broken game) and major bugs had to be handled with recalls which could easily bankrupt a small studio. This sort of darwinism worked pretty well and game-breaking bugs were rare.

It's not just the developer that suffers from buggy games - buggy games that require frequent patches reflect poorly on the console platform itself. The consumer doesn't care who really is responsible for the problem (the distributor? the publisher? the development studio? the coding sweatshop in India?) - he will blame & bad-mouth Microsoft first and probably waste quite a bit of Microsoft support time trying to get his issues solved.

THEY ARE NOT "CHARITABLE DONATIONS"

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop calling it "charity". People funding Double Fine's project through Kickstarter are BUYING things. Pre-ordering a game. Buying experiences (lunches and tours). Buying an HD documentary of the process.

It is charity in exactly the way that going to the store and buying something is charity or ordering a product that is not yet through the manufacturing process that will be shipped to you when it is finished (like that xbox 360 controller modification for disabled persons) is "charity".

I wonder how they managed it.. in the 80's..

[saqmaster]

So it's the mid 80's. You've got your innovative home computer, a Commodore 64, a Sinclar Spectrum, a Toshiba MSX, and others.. A lot of these platforms (and starting with the NES and Sega Master System, used/could_use cartridges for their software/games. Actually, even with using tape or disc it makes no difference. I don't remember _ever_ seeing an 'update' or a 'fix' for a game or piece of software you purchased over the counter.

Sure, with utility software, you'd get new major versions. Games? No. It had to work right out of the box as there was no going back. You were manufacturing a boxed product which simply had to work.

I appreciate it was a lot simpler back then. Less to go wrong. Less demand. Less requirement to always be on the edge of everything. At least that's my perception of how it differed back then to now. Maybe i'm wrong, I don't want to discount any of the great work from the 8 and 16 bit days.

Perhaps the modern internet day creates too much of a challenge. It's easy to knock up some code and distribute it. Same as posting any old crap comment/opinion on a forum, you can just as easily publich some code. 'Back in the old days' you actually had to make the effort and commitment to put something into production, which wouldn't have been taken lightly. Nowadays it seems to be a case of get something new out there before the next guy and worry about fixing it after. Of course, the internet facilitates this nicely.

Maybe the nostalgia bug is just biting again.

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[Lifyre]

They have it already... It's called...

Wait for it...

A personal computer...

Peace of mind about system requirements

[tepples]

what does Valve bring to such a collaboration?

You mean other than peace of mind? People buying a Valve-endorsed PC would have the assurance that it will meet minimum system requirements for the next few years of Valve games, just as people buying a 3DS have the assurance that Nintendo will keep making games for it for a few years.

Re:Peace of mind about system requirements

[drinkypoo]

You mean other than peace of mind? People buying a Valve-endorsed PC would have the assurance that it will meet minimum system requirements for the next few years of Valve games, just as

...just as would anyone who bought any halfway decent PC. It just doesn't amount to anything, the whole point of Steam is to deliver titles to disparate machines.

Concepts that end up not produced

[tepples]

I find myself agreeing with most of your points. So let me rephrase what I understand so that we can continue from common ground:

• Shared screen includes board games that aren't Stratego, hack-and-slash adventures like Gauntlet or Secret of Mana, side-scrollers like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and arcade style games such as fighting games, party games, and Bomberman.
• Shared screen does not include FPS, RTS, MMO, or racing. (Codemasters tried shared-screen racing in the NES era, but Micro Machines model of stopping the race whenever one player gets a screen ahead didn't catch on for obvious reasons.)
• Split screen is fine for racing but uncomfortable for card games, FPS, and RTS because information hiding is essential to these genres.
• The dominant genres among adult gamers as of 2012 are FPS, RTS, and MMO. Other genres have little commercial appeal, or they appeal more to kids.

Did I end up mischaracterizing anything?

Unfortunately, shared-screen really, REALLY limits what you can do in multiplayer gaming, which is why we see so little of it.

That or only the big labels can afford to get into shared-screen because apart from XBLIG, only the big labels can afford console licenses, and people have become unwilling to do shared-screen on a PC. So innovative shared-screen game concepts from indie developers end up never getting produced.

Like I said, most games aren't even multiplayer

Super Mario Galaxy both is and isn't multiplayer. In single-player mode, player 1 controls both Mario and the star bit cursor. In "co-star" mode, player 2 can vacuum up the star bits, so even less-skilled players can join in casually. I imagine that this model can be extended to other 3D platformers or even other genres.

You're expected to do internet anyways, thats what everybody wants

Internet is fine for genres where actions are more or less predictable over the course of 200 ms. Fighting games, for example, aren't among them.

But for day to day gaming, internet is so much more convenient.

I agree for the common case of people living in separate households, but there's still the case of siblings. If your game isn't rated M for money, you're targeting the market of children at least in part. You appear to recognize this:

little people play local multiplayer

And not having the kids fight over the console is a selling point for the little ones' parents.

Re:Concepts that end up not produced

[Zaphod The 42nd]

The dominant genres among adult gamers as of 2012 are FPS, RTS, and MMO. Other genres have little commercial appeal, or they appeal more to kids.

Not quite. Its not just that FPS and RTS are popular, again I feel like I have to fight to get you to recognize what I'm saying. Its not that half of the multiplayer games work for split-screen and half don't; almost none do. Its not just FPS and RTS, its EVERY GENRE except the couple we listed (fighting games, party games, etc.) The default of a video game is requiring a camera that follows the player to show him things, which requires split-screen. Only a few games can still be fun within those limitations (both players will stay in the same area) because their gameplay doesn't have an issue with it. But you're inherently limiting your options for a game if you select that. You could do a shared-screen third person shooter, but it would be awful unless you built the game around it and made it more of an arcade game. The direction that gamers have wanted from games, the games that are popular, regardless of genre, do not support this.

That or only the big labels can afford to get into shared-screen because apart from XBLIG, only the big labels can afford console licenses, and people have become unwilling to do shared-screen on a PC. So innovative shared-screen game concepts from indie developers end up never getting produced.

Your argument is fallacious. If only big labels could afford shared-screen because only big labels can afford console licences, we wouldn't see any indie games on console, period. But we do see several. And whats your problem with Xbox live arcade games? You seem to want to have your cake and eat it too. Big AAA developers who invest $50M+ budgets can only make games that appeal to a very wide audience, because they need tons of sales to recoup that cost. So that means doing what the market demands, which is single player games, and online multiplayer. If you want indie companies to develop a smaller budget game to appeal to a niche market, then you should be willing to accept xbox live arcade games. Thats what they're there for. Whats wrong? And again, on the Wii, the console more focused on group party play and gimmicks, a large portion of games DO feature 4-player gaming and shared-screen gaming. Thats what the Wii owners want, so there's a market for it. Most more hardcore gamers, the 360 and PS3 owners, simply don't care to go to their friends house and crowd around a couch to get the same experience they could get from the comfort of their own home, and with a bigger screen. Having people around is nice, but with voice chat having become ubiquitous, it isn't really as necessary.

Super Mario Galaxy both is and isn't multiplayer. In single-player mode, player 1 controls both Mario and the star bit cursor. In "co-star" mode, player 2 can vacuum up the star bits, so even less-skilled players can join in casually. I imagine that this model can be extended to other 3D platformers or even other genres.

Are you joking? Have you played Super Mario Galaxy "multiplayer"? Its really just a "girlfriend mode". The second player experience is EXTREMELY limited. If you're at all a hardcore gamer, you'll get bored in SECONDS. Literally you'd rather just sit the 2nd player controller down and watch the person play single-player and trade off with them. I know lots of non-gamers who have enjoyed this experience, it lets them interact with their gamer spouse, but it isn't for gamers. Its great for less skilled players, but doesn't work as a mainstream option. It is used very rarely. They threw it in, again, because the wii is the gimmick console, the toy console. It specifically goes for a different market than xbox and ps3, so that it doens't have to compete with them. The gamer market doesn't care for it.

Internet is fine for genres where actions are more or less predictable over the course of 200 ms. Fighting games, for exa

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[Anonymous Coward]

...because we're not in 2006 anymore. We have broadband connections capable of streaming in HD that look far better than anything on terrestrial TV.

For what kinds of game?

[DdJ]

On the XBox 360, I can play four (well, five and a half, but four that count) different kinds of game: on-disc games, XBLA download games, "on-demand" download games, and "indie" games.

All four can be patched. Is the claim that even on the cheapest of these, a patch costs $40,000? That's a bit hard for me to swallow, because I've seen "indy" games get patched, and those are often from very small shops.

(There's also "original XBox" games, now obsolete, but also capable of being patched. There's also interactive content on video DVDs, but almost nobody distributes games that way, and these cannot be patched.)

Re:I worked for Odyssey software back in the day..

[Kalriath]

Shit, we DO? Where?!?!?

...or any other engine ported to Mac OS X

[tepples]

Did you think the thousands of games on Steam use the Source engine?

Not necessarily, but I imagine that those that do use the Source engine or any other engine that's ported to Mac OS X would be the easiest to port to Linux.

Avoiding an Intel GMA

[tepples]

just as would anyone who bought any halfway decent PC

Then please let me rephrase: People buying a Valve-endorsed PC would have the assurance that their PC is halfway decent for gaming, not a "homework and Facebook" PC with a sorely underpowered Intel GMA, and will remain halfway decent by Valve's standards for the next few years. As I understand it, a laptop owner can't change its video chipset after buying it, and even for desktop PCs, a lot of people are unwilling to open the case.

Re:Avoiding an Intel GMA

[drinkypoo]

If there were enough Source-engine titles to make a majority then they might have something, but even those vary significantly in requirements.

Wii has no counterpart to Xbox Live Indie Games

[tepples]

XBLIG

And whats your problem with Xbox live arcade games?

Xbox Live Indie Games and Xbox Live Arcade are two separate environments. Xbox Live Indie Games is open to the public but requires all games to be written in purely managed code in C#. (Other languages need P/Invoke or Emit.) Xbox Live Arcade allows native code but is by invitation only, just like disc games.

on the Wii

Nintendo requires WiiWare developers to be established companies with a dedicated secure office and "relevant video game industry experience" (which I understand to mean prior commercial games on another platform), not home-based family businesses. It has no counterpart to Xbox Live Indie Games.

And money is in the mainstream hardcore gamers who have money to blow every month on games. And those gamers already have high-speed internet connections.

Are you trying to say gamers are willing to move just for a faster Internet connection?