There is a wait time between a patch’s completion and it hitting consumers at large. Minecraft on the Xbox 360 may change that.
Microsoft may be speeding up the time it takes patches to hit games on the Xbox 360 if Paddy Burns of 4J Studios is to be believed. Speaking to EDGE Magazine, he said that the initial Xbox release will be a conversion of the PC version’s beta 1.6.6 beta.
The plan is to create constant updates to get Minecraft on the Xbox up to official release 1.0, the final version Notch launched at Minecon last November. The thing is, Microsoft is notoriously slow about approving updates to games on their platform. Burns claims the company is changing that.
“Microsoft knows that to do a similar thing that’s on PC where they constantly update it, that’s a very difficult thing to do on Xbox because you have to go through the full tests,” he told EDGE. “But they are quite keen to move towards that – they do see it as the future, so I think we might be the first to do constant updates.”
He does stress that the Xbox will never see constant updates like on the PC though. Microsoft will always require a testing period for their title updates. If developers were allowed to release updates on their own terms like they are on PC, you run into the potential for problems like TOR did earlier this week.
Burns says that with the new authentication system; they may be able to get an update out every two months. If that’s true, that’s a huge increase in speed for updates. As EDGE rightly points out, with PCs and mobile gaming offering constant updates, consoles are falling behind in the times.
For those who are anxiously waiting for Minecraft to hit the Xbox 360, the wait won’t be much longer. Burns says that the game should be ready by late winter or early spring.