Wired's Chris Kohler writes:
"Should game developers plan on patching promised features into their games instead of shipping them on the disc?
I don't know, so I'm fighting it out with myself.
Microsoft said Friday that its upcoming Xbox 360 game Fable II won't feature the game's cooperative online play mode at launch. Instead, the company will add the feature later via a patch, which developer Lionhead is hoping will be ready for the first week of the game's availability.
This news comes, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, immediately following Sony's announcement that its PlayStation 3 game LittleBigPlanet will not include its online cooperative game creation mode out of the box. It, too, will come in the form of a patch "as quickly as possible."
The news here isn't that developers are promising things that they cannot deliver before the game's release date. That's been happening like clockwork ever since videogames were invented. The news is that rather than delaying the games further, both Sony and Microsoft are choosing to release incomplete products early, on the assumption that they will be able to complete the games' development soon after the disc has been pressed.
Since I can't decide whether this will be overall good or bad, I have decided to hold a point-counterpoint on the issue, below. I will be arguing both sides."
It turns out that many moons ago, Microsoft once had its eye on the Sony published LittleBigPlanet series.
Microsoft in a nutshell. Always tried to poach Sony employees, games, 3rd party games and devices like the depth camera that was turned into Kinect but was running on PS2 before Xbox 360. Wouldn't be surprised they wanted LBP. Just like they worked behind the scenes pushing the MLB to bring Sony's baseball game to Xbox instead of making their own.
https://www.playstationlife...
They didn't spend years trying to develop their own baseball game. They wanted Sony's game.
They're scum.
"However, Healey said Media Molecule wouldn't have felt right doing that, adding it would have been "morally corrupt"."
Major kudos to Media Molecule for being an upright studio with principles.
Great, more stories like this please. Show the last of the zombies holding the line what we've been saying for years: Microsoft is anti competition, anti industry and has no interest in making games at all.
But hey, at least there's an Xbox Games Showcase to look forward to, right?
Well considering SONY just killed the series, LBP would've been dead by now either way. Though MM probably wouldn't exist by now either, so I'm glad they stayed with SONY, hopefully they don't get shut down any time soon or ever honestly.
Times are changing, and these games would have never been made in today's climate.
Every single time someone uses this phrase whether it's music, movies, books, comics, video games, etc it's always the same claim.
The ubiquitous "they" won't allow it to be made. And every decade these claims are made the claimant completely ignores all the "offensive" material that is published when the claim is made.
In ten years, you can write a new article about how you can't make games like Helldivers 2, Resident Evil VIII, Mortal Kombat I, Dragon's Dogma 2, Alan Wake 2 etc etc etc any more.
Dead Island: "The early PC version of the zombie game swapped the playable character Purna’s Gender Wars skill with a prototype name, which shouldn’t be mentioned directly. The skill name made fun of both Purna as a character and feminists."
"Feminist Whore" lmao
ill add one more to the list.
drakengard 1.
its ridiculous tho, especially since they'd still be able to find their place in alot of places in the world. except america of course ha. and maybe Australia.
ppl are so sensitive these days. ha. but it is what it is.
They're not offensive.
And we need another Fat Princess. Fantastic little game!
Some people just have no sense of humour if this sort of thing offends them. They need to lighten up and stop taking themselves so seriously.
The Xbox 360 was a fantastic console in its day with some truly classic titles, but what are the seven best games for the console?
I'll go with,
Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Culdcept Saga, Shadow Complex, Ace Combat 6 with the flight stick,A Kingdom for Keflings, A World of Keflings.
Bonus Kinect Games: Happy Action Theater and Sesame Street.
*Skyrim was so bad on PS3 that it almost deserves to be #1*
Was this made by a.i.? No human being would put Shadowrun, Fable III, and Splinter Cell: Conviction into a list of the 7 best Xbox 360 games.
Would love to play Ace Combat6 on PlayStation, but Xbox decided to buy exclusivity and keep it off a competing platform.
The only mainline game I never played except for one level at a friends place. Game sold less than any other in the series if I remember correctly.
When the current gen XBOX offering is so lacking people need to refer to games released two generations back....
Resistance 2 will come head on with 8-player co-op and 60-player multiplayer battles.
no need to patch this baby!
When it comes to patching games like LBP, I can see the reason.
There is so many types of co-op like offline playing the levels, online playing the levels, online creating levels, offline creating levels, offline co-op mixed with online co-op.
So yeah, it's ok if they patch it.
come on moron
I remember way back when people were arguing about SNES vs genesis and such, the problems were much more about games being delayed or broken at launch, at least now we have some means to fix the problem.
I think games need to be polished for launch, but adding features later on to the game because you wanted/had to get it into the players hands by a deadline is also as important, so why not cut the less important features till after.