Dobar tekst ne samo na temu konzola tekuce generacije, vec i na temu trendova u modernom gejmingu, gde developeri izbacuju na trziste igre kojima treba jos 5 GB patcheva nekoliko meseci nakon samog izlaska igre da bi bila u igrivom stanju. Do pre samo 2-3 godine je takvo nesto bilo nezamislivo jer se ocekivalo da igra sa diska bude gotov proizvod a ne poluprozivod. Koliko god to nama zvucalo cudno, ima ljudi koji zaista koriste konzole bez pristupa internetu, narocito u Americi gde u nekim krajevima zemlje i dalje koriste dial-up internet. U Srbiji je prilicno dobro stanje sto se tice rasprostranjenosti interneta. To je prva kategorija ugrozenih korisnika, a druga kategorija ugrozenih korisnika mogu biti i oni koji imaju internet, a preorderovali su igru. Slazete se da su oni preorderovali igru verovatno sa namerom da zaigraju od prvog dana, a ne da se zlopate nekoliko meseci sa patchevima, a do tada ih prodje zelja za igrom i entuzijazam. Moje objasnjenje toga je da se time smanjuje mogucnost za pirateriju i deluje mi da neki developeri rade to namerno. Gledam samo temu u kojoj se kace imena torenata za PC igre, i zaboli me glava kada vidim imena torenata tipa Far.Cry.4.patchfix.1.42.PROPER.Crack.COMPLEX, a posle 2 dana izadje nova verzija, i onda skidaj apdejt i krekuj igru svaki put kada izadje apdejt. Koje je vase misljenje o ovoj temi?
When Microsoft announced the Xbox One in 2013, it was going to require an always-on internet connection to function. After backlash from gamers and Sony’s gloating proclamation that the PlayStation 4 would play games just fine without the help of the internet, Microsoft backed down and dropped the requirement (except for a one-time console activation). As it turns out, Microsoft’s initial approach was more realistic about the modern reality of how games are made, and what’s effectively required in order to have a reasonably stable experience with a physical copy of a game you buy off the shelf today. Your console will indeed run without a connection, but your disc-based games may not give it much to work with.
Here’s what’s changed: years ago, when a game “went gold” and was sent off to be pressed onto discs and shipped to stores (a process that takes roughly a month), it used to mean developers, publishers, and platform owners had signed off on the quality of the shipping version as ready to play, right out of the box. Today, a “ship it now and patch it later” attitude from publishers means that a game installed onto an offline console has a high likelihood of arriving in an unacceptably unfinished and buggy state. These never would’ve made it past QA testing five years ago.
This has been a brewing problem for a long time, but 2014 starkly showed that Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, EA, Activision, 2K, and more have all become far too comfortable with – and dependent on – release-day patches that bring their games up to expectations. (This has been true of PC gaming since the rise of Steam, though an internet connection is listed as required on those retail boxes.) Nearly every major game has a patch like this now, and many developers are making dangerous gambles that major issues can be resolved and patched before their games go on sale.
Last year’s spotty launches showed what can happen when problems aren’t as easy to fix as developers anticipated, and critical issues turned the first days of games like Assassin’s Creed Unity into buggy disappointments for many eager day-one buyers. And because the notes for these early patches generally aren’t published, it’s impossible to know which games contain major problems and shouldn’t be purchased if you don’t expect to be able to download the fix.
Even when that last-minute patching strategy pays off, and connected gamers who download the patch as soon as they put the disc in the drive or get it with their digital purchase have a smooth day-one experience (after a potentially lengthy download delay, that is), where does that leave everyone else? The people who bought their new-generation consoles based on the promise that they’d work without internet connections capable of downloading gigabytes’ worth of patches?
Up a creek, that’s where. If you thought Sony’s LittleBigPlanet 3, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Unity, or Microsoft’s Halo: The Master Chief Collection were buggy with their launch-day patches, just imagine the condition they’d be in without them. There’ve been reports of major performance problems, crashes, corrupted save files, and frequent glitches like falling through the environment and failing to respawn cropping up regularly. Let’s not even get into the online multiplayer issues of Halo TMMC or Driveclub – we can assume that if you can’t download patches, you probably aren’t buying games to play online anyway.
I want to stress that day-one patches aren’t necessarily a bad thing. No piece of software is ever perfect, and it’s admirable for developers to continue to iron out bugs immediately after a game has shipped so that we’ll get the smoothest experience possible - but the standard for when a game is ready to slap on a disc has dipped frighteningly low. We shouldn’t be seeing problems this severe on consoles that are expected to be easy to plug in and play.
As an additional side effect of these patches, review copies now typically arrive much later than they used to; instead of sending them out as soon as a game goes gold, developers wait until the patches are ready. That’s drastically shortened the amount of time we have to play for review.
Though we recently updated our reviews of both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 and noted how they’re more recommendable than they were a year ago, that’s assuming you’re online. I still would not advise buying one at all if you don’t expect to be able to regularly download patches. Unless Microsoft and Sony learn from the disastrous, confidence-shaking lessons of 2014 and change their testing standards, the age of the offline console is effectively over.
Source: Opinion: Xbox One and PlayStation 4 Are Effectively Online-Only Consoles - IGN