Lionhead has announced that it will introduce co-op play to Fable II with a patch on the first day of release.
A blog post on the Lionhead website tells us, "Remember a couple of days ago (or was it a week) where on a blog it was mentioned that Fable II would be shipping 'without' Online Co-op? And remember we said we were busting our balls to get it ready in time for a 'Day One' release?
"Well - G o o d [Good] news folks! It looks like we've done it...for all of you who are connected to Xbox Live, when starting up your copy of Fable II (on 21st October in USA, 24th October in Europe and 18th December in Japan). So all of you getting upset and all, you wouldn't even have noticed... Sort of. Well done to the team.
"Taken into account we don't fail certification!"
Co-op play will enable a player to drop-in/drop-out at any time, either in the same room or online.
While the news that co-op will be available upon release is being welcomed by Lionhead fans, some are stating it should have be on the disc from the word go.
LittleBigPlanet looks set to suffer from a similar problem. It was widely expected that online co-op would be available for creative portions of the game straight out of the box, but it was recently revealed that the mode will be part of the first major update.
Source: Lionhead
A blog post on the Lionhead website tells us, "Remember a couple of days ago (or was it a week) where on a blog it was mentioned that Fable II would be shipping 'without' Online Co-op? And remember we said we were busting our balls to get it ready in time for a 'Day One' release?
"Well - G o o d [Good] news folks! It looks like we've done it...for all of you who are connected to Xbox Live, when starting up your copy of Fable II (on 21st October in USA, 24th October in Europe and 18th December in Japan). So all of you getting upset and all, you wouldn't even have noticed... Sort of. Well done to the team.
"Taken into account we don't fail certification!"
Co-op play will enable a player to drop-in/drop-out at any time, either in the same room or online.
While the news that co-op will be available upon release is being welcomed by Lionhead fans, some are stating it should have be on the disc from the word go.
LittleBigPlanet looks set to suffer from a similar problem. It was widely expected that online co-op would be available for creative portions of the game straight out of the box, but it was recently revealed that the mode will be part of the first major update.
Source: Lionhead
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Comments
tyrion 10 Oct 2008 11:49
1/7
Being able to patch console games seems to have produced a climate of "meet the deadline and ship the features later".
Maybe giving consoles a hard drive and an Internet connection wasn't such a great idea after all. :-)
Maybe giving consoles a hard drive and an Internet connection wasn't such a great idea after all. :-)
HyperTails 10 Oct 2008 13:13
2/7
I know what you mean. Just like Madden NFL 09 when I had to wait ages for them to patch it (twice). It is infuriating when they ship a game without features and then patch them later, but at least Fable 2 is getting patched straight away rather than waiting what seems like an eternity.
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piginapoke 10 Oct 2008 16:52
3/7
Couldn't agree more.
I play console and PC and I always rated consoles for the knwing that the game will work without loads of patches etc. Now though HD's are allowing games companies the ability to hoist their unfinished products on us.
To any game developers reading this 'DON'T RELEASE UNFINISHED PRODUCTS'
I play console and PC and I always rated consoles for the knwing that the game will work without loads of patches etc. Now though HD's are allowing games companies the ability to hoist their unfinished products on us.
To any game developers reading this 'DON'T RELEASE UNFINISHED PRODUCTS'
Was p 11 Oct 2008 00:10
4/7
piginapoke wrote:
Couldn't agree more.
I play console and PC and I always rated consoles for the knwing that the game will work without loads of patches etc. Now though HD's are allowing games companies the ability to hoist their unfinished products on us.
To any game developers reading this 'DON'T RELEASE UNFINISHED PRODUCTS'
I play console and PC and I always rated consoles for the knwing that the game will work without loads of patches etc. Now though HD's are allowing games companies the ability to hoist their unfinished products on us.
To any game developers reading this 'DON'T RELEASE UNFINISHED PRODUCTS'
I know what you mean, but it shouldn't get as bad as PC gaming where my limited (and short) experience showed me that to play a game, you need to work out how to fix a game. Looking up patches and amending directories or whatever it was, might be part of the fun for some PC gamers but a console crashing game would be suicidally stupid for a publisher to put out.
Hopefully most will only use the opportunity properly, to expand and refine over an extended lifetime, games that were released un-delayed, with the core elements working properly, because time could be pulled form things that could be added later to sort the fundamentals of the game.
However, it’s more likely the magic X-mas deadline will prevent this being the case. So which game, this X-mas do you think will be the biggest crasher, or need the most patches?
SuperSaiyan4 13 Oct 2008 11:16
5/7
I understand the fustration but have you ever noticed how small and quick the updates actually are? They don't take ages and forever they are very quick, much quicker than PC patches and updates.
HyperTails 13 Oct 2008 11:51
6/7
True. But at the end of the day that doesn't take away the fact that devs are releasing games unfinished just to meet a deadline, when it used to be that they'd delay it by a couple more weeks. And although you're right in saying that they are quick and small, there have been times when (like Madden NFL 09) people like me have had to wait nearly 3 weeks for a second patch. Although that is an exception, it shouldn't get to that stage.
tyrion 13 Oct 2008 13:14
7/7
SuperSaiyan4 wrote:
I understand the fustration but have you ever noticed how small and quick the updates actually are? They don't take ages and forever they are very quick, much quicker than PC patches and updates.
It's not the speed of the patching process that's worrying me, it's the whole attitude.
It used to be console games were, let's say, 98% rock-solid on average, there were buggy games and there were 100% rock solid games. The thing is that developers had to get the code right first time, if it wasn't right you shipped a game with fewer features or with bugs or you shipped later. Look at Angel of Darkness, Core over-reached on that and shipped late and with fewer features and levels ripped out and the game suffered.
Now devs can over-reach, meet the deadlines with a cut-down product and patch it later. They are actually starting to sell games based on the features to come later. Then they have the gall to tell us they are improving things when they are really just finishing the game.
Obviously, not all devs are like that, Criterion and Incognito have done fans a great service with the updates to Paradise and Warhawk, but the temptation is there and that's led some things to slip, like the co-op in Fable 2.