Lost Planet patch at launch Comments by Tom Bramwell

Eh, why don't they fix the bloody release version instead of patching it? Surely it can't have gone gold yet? The demos have been out ages so they could have delayed the game a few weeks in order to implement the improvements in the retail version.

I'm fed up of the whole release-first-and-patch-later mentality with 360 games, it just makes the games look shoddy and unfinished, particularly when you have updates for offline games like LEGO Star Wars II and Cars! Wouldn't it suck if I'd had to download a patch for Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii?

I have a large games collection and it seems like I'm forever having to update every second game when I play them because the 360 doesn't seem to store the updates permanently since the Fall dashboard update but only caches so many before deleting older ones.

holy shit. other devs take notes

Darren... WTF!? Of course the 360 doesn't just "lose" these updates, that's what the unaccessable 7 gig is for, storing updates, and BC updates, as well as patches.

With the game going on sale in less than a month, why wouldn't it have gone gold yet? It needs to ship to warehouses, then to local retail outlets, and at the busiest time of the year too. Not to mention the extra collector's stuff and faceplate needing to be made ready also.

What's your beef with beta testing in this way anyway?

What about people WITHOUT a Hard Drive? Do they just miss out on the patches all together?

Hey, what happened to the previous comments?!?!

Edit:
Darren, why did you delete your previous comment? It looked very informative to me.

Well why would anyone get the 360 without a hard drive beats me anyway i think patches are a good thing keeps the games coming out on time, Darren i would have to disagree if you delay the game more people would be upset about that so you have to please the larger number of people buying the game.

I apriciate Capcom for their fast responce to the demands of the audience... I think this whole thing is great and I also think that Darren... Just go play Cars once its most apropriate for the way you think and I don't think you need a patch for that now do you?

Ooops it looks like I accidentally deleted my post completely when I meant to post the re-edited version!

Anyway the gist of it was that I decided to go through my Xbox 360 collection to see how the launch game fared after a year. Upon loading Kameo, PGR 3 and Call of Duty 2 I was prompted for an update. So I loaded some more games out of curiousity to find... more updates! In fact it seemed like every other 360 game required one yet I'd already downloaded them at the time I played them.

Got to Saints Row, which was only updated a month or so back, but decided NOT to update it again to see if these updates were new. Loaded it up and lo-and-behold no options for V-Sync so the game was completely unpatched. Loaded some more games... Tony Hawk's P8 (needing patching again, only did it the week before), Cars (patched again for the third time!), LEGO Star Wars II (patched again) and so on. Then I loaded Call of Duty 2 and Kameo again after doing all those (remember I'd just patched them) and was prompted to update the games AGAIN!!! I even had to redownload the emulator update even though I'd only downloaded it the week before.

So it would seem that after updating X number of 360 games (it might be 10 or 20, I'm not really sure), the older updates (including the emulator) are erased to make room for newer games. Considering that these updates take seconds to download they cannot be more than a couple of megabytes in size yet the 360 with its 5-6 GB system cache cannot store more than 50-100 MB worth of updates!!!

Now I can understand the need to bug fix online multiplayer games (plus you have to be online to play them anyway) but Cars and LEGO Star Wars II are offline games only and the Saints Row patch addresses single player issues (as well as the dreadful tearing) so once patched they should remain patched. I might not be, or want to be online when I play those games but then I might find myself playing unpatched versions because my 360 has decided to delete those updates!

I suspect that Microsoft may have altered the way the 360 stores updates since the last dashboard update since I don't ever remember having to download so many patches for 360 games before then.

Darren, do you think that several hundred thousand disks just magically appear in the shops? Or maybe Santa gets his magical elves to make them all the night before, then drops them off in his sleigh? January would be a pretty quiet time for him, maybe he is trying to expand his business, use up some of the spare capacity?
Of course it's gone gold! There's less than a month now to manufacture the disks and get them into the warehouses.

Davisorle - "I also think that Darren... Just go play Cars once its most apropriate for the way you think and I don't think you need a patch for that now do you?"

Think, think, think... do you get commission for everytime you use the word or something? /wink

Whatever, it doesn't particularly make any sense what you've written but as I said, Cars is an OFFLINE game that required a patch when I first loaded the game up and which I duly downloaded. Since then I've had to redownload that same patch TWICE and I'd put money on that being the same patch rather than new ones based on what I wrote above. After all why would offline games like this and LEGO Star Wars II require constant patching?

@President Weasel - Of course I realise that they have to manufacture the disks but the multiplayer demo has been out since 24th November and the game isn't released for another month. I'm sure they were aware of the problems with the game within days of that demo's release and could easily have delayed the game to incorporate them into the retail version.

I've known games go gold and be out with a week or two (TeamXbox usually post when a game goes gold). No doubt Capcom's want the game on the shelves earning them money and it's that which has taken priority over common-sense! /rolls eyes

Three of the things included in the patch are:

* Private slots can be set by host!
* Invite friends to a match
* The ability to replay a match with the same group without leaving the post-game lobby

It defies belief that those weren't include in the out-of-the-box version and have to be incorporated via a patch!!! Do they even bother testing these games?!? At times, it feels like we're the ones doing the beta testing... and at £40-£50 a throw! :?

Darren i think you should just stop moaning if you can make a perfect game then go do it and make lots of cash, i think they are doing a great job at after sale services if it's that bad don't buy it and don't go on live.

Ah sorry for all the moaning... I guess spending a long weekend on the Wii has reminded me what it's like to play games that don't require constant patching that's all. All the patches for my 360 games, including those offline ones, were really starting to get on my nerves though... and then this...

Sorry!

Darren, it sounds like your 360 has a problem if you keep having to re-dl the patches.

Cars was Off-line but still Live-Aware no? Maybe it had issues with that.

What's worrying about the 12 items they've listed, if they'd actually looked around at the past 5-6 years worth of on-line Xbox games (and however many years of on-line games ...ever) and identified what works best - 11 of them should have been 'Essentials' for the main build.

I mean "Players will now go to a post-game lobby at the end of a match, not kicked back to the main menu" - WTF, when has being kicked post game EVER been a good game design?!

It still amazes me that Dev's struggle to get their on-line interfaces/lobbies right when Climax pretty much nailed it on their first Xbox attempt with the Motogp add-on demo disc.

Personally, I think this is pretty good news.

A) developers are listening to feedback and acting on it

B) The patching system works

I know people are all 'Patchbox' this and 'patchstation' that, but in my 20 odd years of gaming, i have played some games that have been crippled by bugs and would have welcomed a patch for them with open arms.

Patching of console games wont lead to more unfinsihed games being released, it will just mean the ones that are have a hope of being playable again.

I mean, just looking at the features of this patch, its hard to believe they didnt do it in the first place, but now the issues are patched it will improve peoples enjoyment significantly.

those are some of the most annoying things about Live games they;ve fixed, nice :)

The fixes are in a patch because there is a several month lead time between submitting a Gold version and actual release because it will have to be fully tested by Microsoft before release. So you can either have your programmers sitting there doing nothing, or have them work on fixes like these which can be distributed in a much shorter time than the boxed product and be there simultaneously with release.

If the game failed submission, then they'd probably include them in the resubmission, although that could risk introduing new bugs...

It doesn't mean the boxed copy is a poorer quality product because it's been through submission - there's no crash bugs or anything like that in the list (although they probably wouldn't say if there was), it looks like they've just listened to what people want when they had an oppourtunity to do so and implement it.

Oh and the inviting and kicking thing is because in a ranked match you're not allowed to keep playing with the same people to try and stop cheating. Although I think it would be better if after the match, the server just turned into an unranked match so you could carry on if you wanted.

Okay, I'm sold.

I'd rather have a patch than a bug.