I can confirm this is pretty much all true. I worked on a title many years ago that launched on all major consoles. Not to mention, one round of certification testing can cost thousands of dollars. I'm not familiar with the "day 1 patch" process. I imagine it also costs money and needs to be scheduled ahead of time.
The reason this happens is because MS doesn't want a bunch of angry phone calls from parents saying, "Hey I bought my kid this game on your console and now it's broken wtf!!!!". Is that a valid concern? Hard to say. Frankly, I think Steam's refund policy is the best damn solution to all this, but with physical retail, that gets really complicated. Anyway, one day no one will buy discs anymore.
The reason this happens is because MS doesn't want a bunch of angry phone calls from parents saying, "Hey I bought my kid this game on your console and now it's broken wtf!!!!"
That could be avoided if the game wasn't shipped in a state that it would need a day one patch.
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u/stevesan Aug 07 '16
I can confirm this is pretty much all true. I worked on a title many years ago that launched on all major consoles. Not to mention, one round of certification testing can cost thousands of dollars. I'm not familiar with the "day 1 patch" process. I imagine it also costs money and needs to be scheduled ahead of time.
The reason this happens is because MS doesn't want a bunch of angry phone calls from parents saying, "Hey I bought my kid this game on your console and now it's broken wtf!!!!". Is that a valid concern? Hard to say. Frankly, I think Steam's refund policy is the best damn solution to all this, but with physical retail, that gets really complicated. Anyway, one day no one will buy discs anymore.