Gears Developer Gives Hard Line On Game Patching
Epic Games President speaks up on downloadable content and bigs up hard disks for 360 Core...
Gears of War developer Mark Rein has told 360 Core System owners to get a hard drive if they want to get the most out of their machine. The chatty Epic Games vice president also defended the increasingly prevalent practice of dishing out downloadable patches for games.
Speaking about the increasing use of downloadable content to beef up games Rein says:
On the subject of what the industry likes to call 'games-development cycles extending past a title's release' and we call 'patching', Rein has this to say:
Is Rein telling us that we're getting an incomplete game if we don't have hard disk space to receive patches? Answers below, please.
Rein's been a pretty outspoken chap recently. Click here to see what he has to say about the PS3.
Source: Wired
Speaking about the increasing use of downloadable content to beef up games Rein says:
We've very much applauded Sony for having the hard drive on every single machine. We will absolutely take advantage of the hard drive on Unreal Tournament 3. So, if you don't have a hard drive on your Xbox 360 and you want to get the most out of your UT purchase, think about getting one.
On the subject of what the industry likes to call 'games-development cycles extending past a title's release' and we call 'patching', Rein has this to say:
'I think that's an important model if you want to have a game that has a long lifetime.... The Long Tail, I guess you could call it. The downside is that people will say, "we've brought PC-style patching to console." But that's not a bad thing, to be able to fix something you didn't get quite right, or create new types of gameplay....'
Is Rein telling us that we're getting an incomplete game if we don't have hard disk space to receive patches? Answers below, please.
Rein's been a pretty outspoken chap recently. Click here to see what he has to say about the PS3.
Source: Wired
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Comments
Joji 6 Feb 2007 18:42
1/3
Yeah damn it, get a hard drive. 20gb isn't doesn't cost that much to buy now.
RiseFromYourGrave 6 Feb 2007 22:26
2/3
i think a hard drive is a useful thing indeed, you can reduce load times, and store all kinds of data related to the game such as saves. but i think that in an increasingly rich industry, release quality will often take a hit when the devs know they can still make release date to please the bank, and 'get rid of that fatal error on level 12 afterwards'
Steviepunk 7 Feb 2007 10:11
3/3
I think the important point about patching any game, whether on PC or console, is that the game should ship in a robust state. The opportunity for patching should be used to fix problems that were ignored in order to ship the game on time, this is what gives 'patching' a bad name. However all software, games or otherwise, goes through revisions and updates, that's a fact of life, some things do benefit from being changed once people starting using it.