Patch support on 360 has generally mimicked many other titles/developers/publishers, in my experience. High hopes, late submission to the big two, even later approval and release. This isn’t good, but I don’t really see any other companies doing much better, to be honest. Whenever “early” updates are required for a game, it’s always the developer that gets it in the neck - while I’m not suggesting SD are 100% innocent in this regard, I do doubt that it’s all their fault. MS couldn’t really give a toss about any publishers or developers really, because they run the whole show - if you’ve got a problem with it, you can stick it. There’s nobody else to turn to - you want a 360 patch released, you have to go through MS. Sad, but a side effect of console publishing since day 1. MS, Sony, N, Sega - all tightly controlled and licensed any releases on their hardware platforms.
The bottom line - if a game is released “well”, and doesn’t require early patching, players don’t even notice this lag. Nor do developers - they take their time, get **** done properly, and submit - after a few days, they might publicise the patch. When people aren’t hanging on and waiting for these things just to be able to play, it’s a completely different story to what we see happening here.
I hope they didn’t sign a multi-title deal - for their sakes, and for their customers’ sakes. If they DID, and I worked at SD - I’d be throwing myself overboard and swimming towards whatever piece of land was closest. I only noticed the “double barrel shotgun pre-order” nonsense for Rage the other day - while I cannot claim to know this was not id’s choice, I feel it isn’t very id-like. Their relationship with Bethesda is already making me have doubts about a developer I’ve had the highest regard for, since the early 90s. I never thought id would do something as ridiculous as limiting certain weapons to pre-orders.
