Microsoft comes under fire for five-figure Xbox 360 “patch fee”(arstechnica.com)
arstechnica.com
Microsoft comes under fire for five-figure Xbox 360 “patch fee”
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/microsoft-comes-under-fire-for-five-figure-xbox-360-patch-fee/
63 comments
Okay, they knew what the policies were when they signed up. Big deal. It's not like the devs predicted that they'd botch a patch for some 1% or so of their users.
The developer is just saying, "Look, the cost-benefit analysis just doesn't support making a new patch." That's honest. It doesn't sound like a policy to me (you'd have to so something more than once before I'd call it "policy"). The devs don't owe it to the affected users to pony up the cash to Microsoft. Devs don't have unlimited liability for lost save files.
Microsoft's policy makes sense from a "Look, it costs money to make sure that your games don't crash on users' systems." So maybe Microsoft will change the policy so that a small enough patch goes through a less thorough review process. That's what happens when your policy has unintended consequences: you reevaluate it.
The developer is just saying, "Look, the cost-benefit analysis just doesn't support making a new patch." That's honest. It doesn't sound like a policy to me (you'd have to so something more than once before I'd call it "policy"). The devs don't owe it to the affected users to pony up the cash to Microsoft. Devs don't have unlimited liability for lost save files.
Microsoft's policy makes sense from a "Look, it costs money to make sure that your games don't crash on users' systems." So maybe Microsoft will change the policy so that a small enough patch goes through a less thorough review process. That's what happens when your policy has unintended consequences: you reevaluate it.
Maybe test their patch properly before deploying it…
Judging from their previous behaviour it's a horrendously sloppy "company".
Judging from their previous behaviour it's a horrendously sloppy "company".
It sounds like a small percentage of users were affected by corrupted save data upon upgrading from the previous version.
100% test coverage is pure fantasy. You might as ask for a 100% complete specification of a product before you begin working on it.
I'm actually just being devil's advocate here, but most bugs in games are not that important, and the companies that are a little sloppy can spend less money making mostly the same product.
100% test coverage is pure fantasy. You might as ask for a 100% complete specification of a product before you begin working on it.
I'm actually just being devil's advocate here, but most bugs in games are not that important, and the companies that are a little sloppy can spend less money making mostly the same product.
IMHO, that "policy" is kind of odd anyway. It creates an incentive for Microsoft to not do a very through review of the first patch, which is free, so they can get paid to do a review of the second one.
When coining such things, one must be very aware of the incentives they create. Bad incentives will accumulate and potentialize and then come to haunt you...
When coining such things, one must be very aware of the incentives they create. Bad incentives will accumulate and potentialize and then come to haunt you...
Are you seriously suggesting that Microsoft intentionally wants to break games so they can hope to get patch review fees out of developers?
Edit: According to [1], Fez had 76,000 downloads in the first half-month (April) alone. And in [2], Fez has 114,000 gamers on its leaderboards. So, where's the value in hurting conversions and pissing of a lot of folks, just for a chance to get a $40K fee?
1: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/171271/InDepth_Xbox_Live_...
2: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174307/Xbox_Live_Arcade_s...
Edit: According to [1], Fez had 76,000 downloads in the first half-month (April) alone. And in [2], Fez has 114,000 gamers on its leaderboards. So, where's the value in hurting conversions and pissing of a lot of folks, just for a chance to get a $40K fee?
1: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/171271/InDepth_Xbox_Live_...
2: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174307/Xbox_Live_Arcade_s...
Firstly, I'll say that I've met and worked with several people from Microsoft and there's no doubt in my mind that they're putting 120% into their QA mission. I don't think any company in the world invests more into and does more heavy-duty patch release testing than Microsoft.
That said, the general question "where's the value in hurting conversions and pissing of a lot of folks, just for a chance to get a $40K fee?" does have an answer.
Consider a company where departments are fighting for budgets and managers are looking after their own neck far more than the common good of the organization (believe it or not, this happens sometimes). Organizations can easily devolve into a state of loving those business units that are perceived as "revenue centers" and hating those perceived as "cost centers". Microsoft used to be famous for derisively referring to teams (and even individuals) as "overhead".
Obviously it's stupid and short-signted, but sometimes things like QA on patch releases for 3rd-party distributed software end up being several degrees removed from the revenue inflows, at least to the bean counters. In these situations, managers may be pressured into downsizing their quality efforts or trying to raise as much raw revenue as possible even if it really represents negative value on the whole.
When the pressure comes down, the perverse incentives pop up. This "stack ranking" scheme sounds like a brilliant example.
My guess is this policy comes from one or two^Hthree motivations:
* Users don't like patching.
* A desire to raise the cost of patching to hopefully encourage higher quality in the 1.0 releases. True or not, the perception among many in the industry is that Apple's app store requirements to jump through hoops to release versions has raised quality among those apps.
* But the simplest explanation goes like this: "Why did you have to hire these extra staff at 40K each?" "Well, because we had more patch releases than last year." "Hmm...."
That said, the general question "where's the value in hurting conversions and pissing of a lot of folks, just for a chance to get a $40K fee?" does have an answer.
Consider a company where departments are fighting for budgets and managers are looking after their own neck far more than the common good of the organization (believe it or not, this happens sometimes). Organizations can easily devolve into a state of loving those business units that are perceived as "revenue centers" and hating those perceived as "cost centers". Microsoft used to be famous for derisively referring to teams (and even individuals) as "overhead".
Obviously it's stupid and short-signted, but sometimes things like QA on patch releases for 3rd-party distributed software end up being several degrees removed from the revenue inflows, at least to the bean counters. In these situations, managers may be pressured into downsizing their quality efforts or trying to raise as much raw revenue as possible even if it really represents negative value on the whole.
When the pressure comes down, the perverse incentives pop up. This "stack ranking" scheme sounds like a brilliant example.
My guess is this policy comes from one or two^Hthree motivations:
* Users don't like patching.
* A desire to raise the cost of patching to hopefully encourage higher quality in the 1.0 releases. True or not, the perception among many in the industry is that Apple's app store requirements to jump through hoops to release versions has raised quality among those apps.
* But the simplest explanation goes like this: "Why did you have to hire these extra staff at 40K each?" "Well, because we had more patch releases than last year." "Hmm...."
I'm not saying they want to do that. I said it creates the incentive, not the action per se. Not all facets of a given incentive are acted upon.
I even understand the reason for the fee. It's to make sure developers give their maximum before submitting a game so they can avoid the need to patch and the fee in the first time. It creates an incentive for the developers, too... Hell, maybe it even costs more than $40000 for Microsoft to review the patches so they're being benevolent here and the whole thing is moot. I don't know, I don't work there.
My post was merely to point that, when one creates an incentive, there might be many sides to it, therefore one must be careful when creating incentives.
I'm an XBox owner who buys a lot of games (even arcade ones). I think it's the best Microsoft product I ever use (their awesome keyboards of circa 2001 being a close second). That XBox games on demand thing is just awesome.
Will try to be less succinct when commenting in the future.
I even understand the reason for the fee. It's to make sure developers give their maximum before submitting a game so they can avoid the need to patch and the fee in the first time. It creates an incentive for the developers, too... Hell, maybe it even costs more than $40000 for Microsoft to review the patches so they're being benevolent here and the whole thing is moot. I don't know, I don't work there.
My post was merely to point that, when one creates an incentive, there might be many sides to it, therefore one must be careful when creating incentives.
I'm an XBox owner who buys a lot of games (even arcade ones). I think it's the best Microsoft product I ever use (their awesome keyboards of circa 2001 being a close second). That XBox games on demand thing is just awesome.
Will try to be less succinct when commenting in the future.
> It creates an incentive for Microsoft to not do a very through review of the first patch
MS has no incentive to review any patch at all beyond "it won't break stuff other than this developer's stuff". Unless I'm misunderstanding the review process code quality is the developers problem and if they release a bad patch that MS let out because it looked OK form their PoV (it applied cleanly to their test systems, and doesn't make the resulting app break any of the walled garden's rules) then that is not MS's fault.
Yes, it is a bad system. But they can't sign up for a bad system, give exclusivity to that bad system, then moan that they are stuck in a bad system and expect me to have sympathy for them. The way to try change the system as a developer is to refuse to take part until it is fixed - if the system loses users due to lack of content then MS may listen. The users are not going to fall for the reverse ransom that they are trying to pull - the average player is going to think "I paid you for the game, you need to fix it for me, I don't care what the costs are to you, that is a business problem for your accountants to sort out".
MS has no incentive to review any patch at all beyond "it won't break stuff other than this developer's stuff". Unless I'm misunderstanding the review process code quality is the developers problem and if they release a bad patch that MS let out because it looked OK form their PoV (it applied cleanly to their test systems, and doesn't make the resulting app break any of the walled garden's rules) then that is not MS's fault.
Yes, it is a bad system. But they can't sign up for a bad system, give exclusivity to that bad system, then moan that they are stuck in a bad system and expect me to have sympathy for them. The way to try change the system as a developer is to refuse to take part until it is fixed - if the system loses users due to lack of content then MS may listen. The users are not going to fall for the reverse ransom that they are trying to pull - the average player is going to think "I paid you for the game, you need to fix it for me, I don't care what the costs are to you, that is a business problem for your accountants to sort out".
Why exactly did the FEZ creators go for the Xbox Live instead of Steam or other alternatives, if they knew of these kind of issues in the first place?
Plus, the developers are in the wrong here, as their software is malfunctional in the first place. Maybe they should have done more or better testing before releasing it for Microsoft certification.
The Fez creators look like brats who do not want to accept responsibility for their mistakes, and blame Microsoft for not fixing their problems for free. Very poor PR skills.
Plus, the developers are in the wrong here, as their software is malfunctional in the first place. Maybe they should have done more or better testing before releasing it for Microsoft certification.
The Fez creators look like brats who do not want to accept responsibility for their mistakes, and blame Microsoft for not fixing their problems for free. Very poor PR skills.
>“Fez is a console game, not a PC game,” he states, emphatically. “It’s made to be played with a controller, on a couch, on a Saturday morning. To me, that matters; that’s part of the medium.” I get so many comments shouting at me that I’m an idiot for not making a PC version. ‘You’d make so much more money! Can’t you see? Meatboy sold more on Steam!’ Good for them. But this matters more to me than sales or revenue. It’s a console game on a console. End of story.”
From an interview with the developer, Phil Fish: http://www.nowgamer.com/features/950149/fez_interview_polytr...
From an interview with the developer, Phil Fish: http://www.nowgamer.com/features/950149/fez_interview_polytr...
This guy must live in a different planet or something. I play games on my PC just like on any console, with a controller (except for some FPS or RTS), and on a big monitor that has a better resolution than my TV anyway.
And honestly, I can understand the idea of having the benefit of a couch and huge screen for some very spectacular games. Arcade games, Racing games, fighting games, etc.
But Fez ? Come on.
It could well be an iPad or a PC game it wouldn't really matter.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
And honestly, I can understand the idea of having the benefit of a couch and huge screen for some very spectacular games. Arcade games, Racing games, fighting games, etc.
But Fez ? Come on.
It could well be an iPad or a PC game it wouldn't really matter.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
It's hard for me to question the guy that wrote the damn thing but I so incredibly profusely disagree with him. This is the casual game that I want to play on the plane, on my phone, etc. I sit down on my xbox to play a three-hour marathon of Halo once every 2 weeks. Other than that, the Xbox is a hassle.
Anything that creates a bad user experience is ultimately bad for the platform so it's in everyone's best interest to get it fixed. In this case the update is probably 99.9% similar to the last paid update. That should really be a freebie. When you get into more significant changes that's a different discussion. If you get one free update when you publish the game the assumption seems to be that most games are going to need a patch so it's built in. It would probably be safe to assume that a patch is likely to introduce at least some small bugs and would also require a minor update later.
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As much as I don't like this particular flair of drama, I'm siding with Fish. If a patch cost five figures just to go through certification, then Microsoft needs to rethink their XBLA strategy for independent games. Let this be another flag for teams to avoid XBLA at all costs.
Plus Microsoft's XBLA terms are horrible. For example, you must sign a contract that puts your XBLA release as a pure-Xbox-exclusive release, or at least a timed-exclusive if you have the clout to fight back. (Only the majors can swing a "same-day multi platform release" via XBLA) The percentages XBLA offers are unfavorable, they make you pay for advertising on the games page, and I've heard that you make more money via PC release on Steam (or your favorite DRM-free service). In short: if you're seriously working on XBLA, demand a better contract or dump it.
It's just unfortunate that Fez's original contract is probably so old, the Apple App Store with it's free patches was a new concept then. If you're working on something that will take forever to do, get a PC prototype working first then dumb down to consoles if you must.
Plus Microsoft's XBLA terms are horrible. For example, you must sign a contract that puts your XBLA release as a pure-Xbox-exclusive release, or at least a timed-exclusive if you have the clout to fight back. (Only the majors can swing a "same-day multi platform release" via XBLA) The percentages XBLA offers are unfavorable, they make you pay for advertising on the games page, and I've heard that you make more money via PC release on Steam (or your favorite DRM-free service). In short: if you're seriously working on XBLA, demand a better contract or dump it.
It's just unfortunate that Fez's original contract is probably so old, the Apple App Store with it's free patches was a new concept then. If you're working on something that will take forever to do, get a PC prototype working first then dumb down to consoles if you must.
I frankly never understood the real reason why Fez was released exclusively for xbox. From the outsider perspective it seems like a very bad decision when it comes to a game as hyped as this one was.
Fez started development over 4 years ago when steam wasn't as big for indies as it is now, they probably signed an agreement back then giving exclusivity to Microsoft for a period of time after initial release on XBLA in return for some promotion.
MS probably heavily promotes exclusives to their users so free advertising on what was becoming the dominant console anyway.
> what was becoming the dominant console anyway
Do you have any numbers to back you up? I couldn't find any. All I got pointed the Wii as worldwide sales leader and 360 and PS3 more or less tied in second place. The 360 seems to have a small lead over the PS3 in the US (with Wii coming in third), but that's all.
Do you have any numbers to back you up? I couldn't find any. All I got pointed the Wii as worldwide sales leader and 360 and PS3 more or less tied in second place. The 360 seems to have a small lead over the PS3 in the US (with Wii coming in third), but that's all.
Console numbers shouldn't be a metric here - I own all three consoles, only use the Xbox for gaming.
What should be counted is actual money spent inside the platform's online ecosystem - kinda curious myself how PSN is doing compared to Xbox Live. I'll have to look this up when I get a chance.
What should be counted is actual money spent inside the platform's online ecosystem - kinda curious myself how PSN is doing compared to Xbox Live. I'll have to look this up when I get a chance.
Fez was implemented in C#/XNA
There are C#/XNA games on Steam. The developer, Phil Fish, claims it's built specifically for the "console/couch" experience on a Saturday morning (seemingly unaware that many people connect their PCs to televisions and sit on the couch).
Well, there are puzzles that assume you're using an Xbox 360 controller.
Do you have any data backing up the claim that a significant number of people connect their pcs to their televisions? Outside of the tech industry I imagine this is simply not a large consumer base.
It's definitely not huge, but anecdotally I have heard of more and more people doing this. More PC games support the use of an XBox 360 controller and more video cards have an HDMI out than ever before.
Also, this has been an unusually long console hardware cycle resulting in there being a much bigger gap between PC and console graphics.
Also, this has been an unusually long console hardware cycle resulting in there being a much bigger gap between PC and console graphics.
Hundreds of thousands of people could play Braid on their PCs, how does that differs from playing Fez?
Is not about how many people connect their PCs to their televisions, but about how they enjoy playing their games. IMHO that does not justify the Microsoft exclusivity strategy.
Is not about how many people connect their PCs to their televisions, but about how they enjoy playing their games. IMHO that does not justify the Microsoft exclusivity strategy.
My dad connects his Mac to the TV, but only uses it to watch pirated TV shows on YouTube...
Probably paid off, although he's denying that now.
Everything I've seen of Polytron irritates me.
I watched the Indie game documentary a few weeks ago and had a bitter taste in my mouth from them then.
If you read the press release on their website it certainly doesn't paint a great picture either.
We believe the save file corruption issue mostly happened to players who had completed, or almost completed the game
So Phil Fish harps on about how its a game that should be enjoyed on Saturdays on the couch, but is happy for paying users to have their entire experience destroyed at the end. As a gamer that would be my worst nightmare and I would never buy anything you sold again. I would probably put the controller through the screen as well.
The patch fixes almost everything that’s been wrong with the game since launch. The framerate issues, the loading, the skips, the death loops, everything! All that stuff is fixed!
Wow. Version 1 obviously wasn't ready at all. Why was it shipped in the first place? I guess a good question is why did MS let it ship?
What annoys me more, is in the documentary, the demo build they had at Penny Arcade had all those seem issues. Phil stood their straight faced telling people it was because they made last minute changes. This is game that was in development for FIVE YEARS!
From what I could tell, Phil wasn't even a programmer at all. Just art director/concept guy. He had some French guy doing all the coding.
People often mistakenly believe that we got paid by Microsoft for being exclusive to their platform. Nothing could be further from the truth. WE pay THEM
Then you suck at business. Get out of the game and find something else to do with your life.
I wanted to like Fez, but Polytron clearly have no idea what they are doing - how to build a loyal customer base, ship working code, etc. They are happy to blame the big bad wolf, when quite frankly the only people they have to blame are themselves.
I watched the Indie game documentary a few weeks ago and had a bitter taste in my mouth from them then.
If you read the press release on their website it certainly doesn't paint a great picture either.
We believe the save file corruption issue mostly happened to players who had completed, or almost completed the game
So Phil Fish harps on about how its a game that should be enjoyed on Saturdays on the couch, but is happy for paying users to have their entire experience destroyed at the end. As a gamer that would be my worst nightmare and I would never buy anything you sold again. I would probably put the controller through the screen as well.
The patch fixes almost everything that’s been wrong with the game since launch. The framerate issues, the loading, the skips, the death loops, everything! All that stuff is fixed!
Wow. Version 1 obviously wasn't ready at all. Why was it shipped in the first place? I guess a good question is why did MS let it ship?
What annoys me more, is in the documentary, the demo build they had at Penny Arcade had all those seem issues. Phil stood their straight faced telling people it was because they made last minute changes. This is game that was in development for FIVE YEARS!
From what I could tell, Phil wasn't even a programmer at all. Just art director/concept guy. He had some French guy doing all the coding.
People often mistakenly believe that we got paid by Microsoft for being exclusive to their platform. Nothing could be further from the truth. WE pay THEM
Then you suck at business. Get out of the game and find something else to do with your life.
I wanted to like Fez, but Polytron clearly have no idea what they are doing - how to build a loyal customer base, ship working code, etc. They are happy to blame the big bad wolf, when quite frankly the only people they have to blame are themselves.
> Wow. Version 1 obviously wasn't ready at all. Why was it shipped in the first place? I guess a good question is why did MS let it ship?
Perhaps the one-free-patch policy should change into a no-free-patches policy, to encourage companies not to ship unfinished games.
Perhaps the one-free-patch policy should change into a no-free-patches policy, to encourage companies not to ship unfinished games.
Did they have a deadline to release though? Release then patch seems to be the way to do things now- the last (big) game I remember noticing being delayed was Halo 2. It seems that since then the priority has been on shipping, then patching (which creates a whole lot of problems for the future, when MS shut down the XBL servers and we can't get patches for our older games any more).
Remember back when consoles weren't connected to the internet and there was no way for developers to push patches to users? Remember how people used to complain their console games work fine, while their PC games require installing 3 patches right after installation in order to be able to play the game?
I'm not saying I approve of what Microsoft is doing here, but surely there must be a solution other than making all gaming systems equally fucked-up?
I'm not saying I approve of what Microsoft is doing here, but surely there must be a solution other than making all gaming systems equally fucked-up?
There have always been patches; it just used to be that they were unequally distributed, and those that didn't get them, just lived with the bugs (mostly because that was "just the way things were.")
Super Nintendo cartridges, for example, have a version metadata field as part of their ROM headers. Many games, a few months after their original release, would release 1.1, and even 1.2 versions of the cartridge. This would occur with no change to the product packaging or labeling, or even a different distributor-catalogue SKU number. Simply, if you bought the game after a certain point in time, you got a version with less bugs than someone who bought it before that point. This didn't help anyone bit by the original bug, of course--unless they went out and repurchased the game!
Super Nintendo cartridges, for example, have a version metadata field as part of their ROM headers. Many games, a few months after their original release, would release 1.1, and even 1.2 versions of the cartridge. This would occur with no change to the product packaging or labeling, or even a different distributor-catalogue SKU number. Simply, if you bought the game after a certain point in time, you got a version with less bugs than someone who bought it before that point. This didn't help anyone bit by the original bug, of course--unless they went out and repurchased the game!
What everyone is missing over the dim of disapproval is that THE PATCH FEE IS NOT A PROFIT for Microsoft. They are going to spend on the order of $40K testing your game. They are that serious about making sure your patch doesn't screw up the user experience.
How much work (number of hours) goes into testing this type of game? Using $150/hour as a basis, that would cover 266 hours of testing time. As somebody with no experience in game testing, this sounds more like government pricing in aerospace.
Let's go with $15/hr instead, since that's probably what the testers make. That's about 2666 hours of testing.
Now, how many different XBox 360 models are there? Count each one twice, once for the hard drive and once for a USB Stick that people will use to store the game and saves. http://beta.ivc.no/wiki/index.php/Xbox_360_Revisions 8 x 2 = 16.
Now we're down to 166 hours of testing with each revision of the 360.
Let's put 4 people on each one and let them test it for only a week.
And just like that, all that money is used up.
I'm sure some of that money goes into bandwidth, administration, etc etc. So they don't even get 4 people to test it for a week for that money.
Now, how many different XBox 360 models are there? Count each one twice, once for the hard drive and once for a USB Stick that people will use to store the game and saves. http://beta.ivc.no/wiki/index.php/Xbox_360_Revisions 8 x 2 = 16.
Now we're down to 166 hours of testing with each revision of the 360.
Let's put 4 people on each one and let them test it for only a week.
And just like that, all that money is used up.
I'm sure some of that money goes into bandwidth, administration, etc etc. So they don't even get 4 people to test it for a week for that money.
Is this close to what's actually happening here? I ask because this contrasts significantly from what happens with Windows Phone app updates, even though you have similar testing issues (different hardware). What's so special about the Xbox?
It's the Cathedral and the Bazaar again. The reason-for-being of the consoles is to establish their brands as delivering a /reliably/ high-quality experience for the users. Users don't worry about variations in hardware, drivers, install requirements, background processes, etc... They pop the game in and it works. Even though it's a huge, complicated, AAA game, it's not going to crash. Can your PC run Crysis? There are a huge number of cross-cutting issues that can screw that up. Can your Xbox run Crysis? Yes. Yes it can.
When you submit a game for approval as an Xbox retail game, it goes through a long, expensive testing process. Any failure means you aren't shipping. Changing one bit on the disk restarts the testing process. So, you are highly motivated to test for yourself very, very thoroughly before submitting.
Contrast this with a very open platform like Android where anyone can do anything with minimal, if any, quality assurance. It's wonderfully liberating. But, you have to accept the fact that with so many changes from so many people being mixed together with minimal, if any, comprehensive test coverage, a lot of stuff is going to be busted a lot of the time.
Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo spend a huge amount of time, money and effort on quality assurance for their consoles because if they didn't, you might as well play games on the PC. They are doing all of this work to establish confidence in their audience that the $60 they spend isn't going to be buying a game that crashes on load on 5% of devices.
Meanwhile on mobile, users demand free apps because they never know what they are going to get. Investing non-zero money to install a mobile app is too much risk for a user. Lots of apps crash frequently for no obvious reason. Instead of up-front assurance, the mobile space relies on freemium, reviews, refunds and other after-the-fact techniques to eventually, statistically, push most problematic apps into areas of less visibility.
When you submit a game for approval as an Xbox retail game, it goes through a long, expensive testing process. Any failure means you aren't shipping. Changing one bit on the disk restarts the testing process. So, you are highly motivated to test for yourself very, very thoroughly before submitting.
Contrast this with a very open platform like Android where anyone can do anything with minimal, if any, quality assurance. It's wonderfully liberating. But, you have to accept the fact that with so many changes from so many people being mixed together with minimal, if any, comprehensive test coverage, a lot of stuff is going to be busted a lot of the time.
Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo spend a huge amount of time, money and effort on quality assurance for their consoles because if they didn't, you might as well play games on the PC. They are doing all of this work to establish confidence in their audience that the $60 they spend isn't going to be buying a game that crashes on load on 5% of devices.
Meanwhile on mobile, users demand free apps because they never know what they are going to get. Investing non-zero money to install a mobile app is too much risk for a user. Lots of apps crash frequently for no obvious reason. Instead of up-front assurance, the mobile space relies on freemium, reviews, refunds and other after-the-fact techniques to eventually, statistically, push most problematic apps into areas of less visibility.
As opposed to the already screwed-up experience?
At least when patches cost $40k, you have an incentive to make a really, really solid first release. I wonder if it leads to less buggy software in general? (obviously this is kind of a counterexample to that...)
> At least when patches cost $40k, you have an incentive to make a really, really solid first release.
The rule applies to all titles (not just XBLA -- I remember looking at the official MS documents stating how much it is), and you'd think that it would be pretty good incentive, but for some games it's really not. I believe Call of Duty Black Ops is on its eighth title update. Other games such as Forza and Halo (which are/were both MS studios) actually have had very, very few updates. Halo 3 had two total, while Reach I believe had none -- both of which are very well-coded games.
I think you can generalize and say that it does lead to less buggy software in general, but it really depends on the studio.
The rule applies to all titles (not just XBLA -- I remember looking at the official MS documents stating how much it is), and you'd think that it would be pretty good incentive, but for some games it's really not. I believe Call of Duty Black Ops is on its eighth title update. Other games such as Forza and Halo (which are/were both MS studios) actually have had very, very few updates. Halo 3 had two total, while Reach I believe had none -- both of which are very well-coded games.
I think you can generalize and say that it does lead to less buggy software in general, but it really depends on the studio.
TL;DR: developer builds software for walled garden ecosystem and is surprised when he's hurt by the owner of said ecosystem.
http://xkcd.com/743/
When will people get sick of variations on this story?
http://xkcd.com/743/
When will people get sick of variations on this story?
When there's not a 1000 bigger success stories that drown this out.
Why would anyone pay someone for the right to only release on their platform? That seems backwards. The other bit of nonsense is $40,000 -- really? That's crazy talk. Apple does some boneheaded things but at least you don't have to pay them for updating and releasing, aside from the nominal yearly $99 fee for the dev program.
I admit, I don't fully get it. Perhaps someone here can clarify the situation.
I admit, I don't fully get it. Perhaps someone here can clarify the situation.
The game industry has had "traditionally" certain kickback mechanism towards the gaming platform developers. For example I remember playing around with MIT/Sloans Platformwars, which even included variables for the game developer kickback in form of licenses[1]. I suspect these were argued by the mutual benefits in the development, branding and licensing. But of cause the democratization process initiated by the low entrance barriers in the App market are putting these in question. Nevertheless one could still see the fees taken by Apple from each App sale as a form of license to get access to their platform.
[1] https://mitsloan.mit.edu/MSTIR/system-dynamics/platform-wars...
[1] https://mitsloan.mit.edu/MSTIR/system-dynamics/platform-wars...
In another thread about this issue the fee to microsoft gives them a competitive edge in that ecosystem; stuff like marketing and highlighting inside the xbox live store. 40k for a patch is absurd though.
I haven't seen the $40k figure confirmed by anyone from Microsoft. It's just being uncritically passed around by bloggers.
You won't see it confirmed by people because there are NDAs around it. And people that are happy with their Microsoft account managers have no reason to complain on twitter or any other tech blog and get into potential legal trouble :-)
The $40K figure comes from Tim Schafer, who has a history of being a reputable voice in the game dev community.
There's no real reason to believe he made it up.
There's no real reason to believe he made it up.
It's not clear to me that the figure would be the same for every developer and every circumstance. In any case, I'm sure Tim is a great guy but it would be nice if someone (anyone who is writing on this) would research it a little for confirmation.
Several years ago I was a programmer for a small gaming firm. I spent 3 weeks working closely with the producer at our publisher and one of the tricks he told me about in their QA process was they they would hedge their costs by submitting their games to MS before they had finished internal QA. This would essentially allow them to obtain free QA time from a very large external group. (console QA is usually better than PC, so a multi-platform release would push the xbox version first to maximize the effect.) I think it came up because the certification fees for releasing on the 360 were just being raised to free first check, $40,000 each time there-after.
We've been in the position of Fez's creator, and it pains me to say, we made the same choice as him (except for the drama) but... the $40k figure is way, way off. I have no idea how Tim Schafer came to it, or rather, how he was misinterpreted (because the man is obviously NOT an idiot).
Way off is kinda unhelpful, is it way more expensive or way cheaper?
For us it was way cheeper. Still a shocking amount for a small studio. I'm not aware of any "pricing structure", or if there is any; I heard the number we were supposed to pay.
As a guess, I'd say it varies depending on a few factors such as the scale of the game, the changes introduced, etc.
This is why something like OUYA is needed to disrupt the market, and be more open for developers.
I wish this was true, but sadly the games developer community is all about protecting IP and using proprietary tools as much as possible.
Big studios only care about platforms and their support, not if they are open.
Big studios only care about platforms and their support, not if they are open.
Well OUYA is meant more for indie developers than big studios, so that might help.
Can't Polytron use some of their IGF winnings to fund the patch to patch the bugs they introduced when rushing out their first patch
What it comes down to is the developers thinking:
"Who will gamers hate more? MS for the policy, or us for not releasing a patch?"
Especially if they say:
"We have fixed the problem… MS just wants their ransom for us to give it to you."
MS is then in the bind of making an exception, thus creating the expectation for future developers that the platform agreement is flexible and/or a joke.
There's no way to win this one. Both parties have somewhat dumb policies and because of the contract are deciding to play russian roulette with user's data.