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Machiavellian on 22 July 2014
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BMaker11 said:
Machiavellian said:
BMaker11 said:

Why do games ship with Day 1 patches to up the rez to 1080p? They let the games go gold knowing full well they could just have it run at 1080p, but they still release and patch it the moment you insert the disc into the console. Clearly they have the code to apply it to the game beforehand, since they announce months in advance that the patch is released the day the game releases (when, in those months, they could just make the game 1080p on the disc), but they just don't apply it.

So, to answer your question: I have no clue how much work they put into it, but it doesn't mean they put a whole lot into it just because DRM was still on the console when the console launched

Actually thats not correct.  Games that come with day one patch mean that the changes needed could not be added before the Gold master is sent to production.  People forget their is a huge machine that goes into getting software and hardware into your hands.  Usually they have a process and timeline.  Missing those timelines would be very costly because a lot of marketing, hardware and software allocations and money spent is wrapped up in the process.

From my experience, I believe MS had to scrap a good portion of their OS security.  The 24 hour check was probably deeply integrated with how the X1 was made.  Just removing such a piece probably would introduce a hell of a lot of code especially if the security touched a lot of the OS when running games.  MS not only changed the DRM but they had to change how games would run since you had to install the game first.  It was not setup to run from disk as once installed you could literly throw the disk away.

With the games example, don't games go gold only like a week or two before being released? You telling me that patch they have raring to go Day 1 can't be applied to the master copy before it gets sent out to press onto a million discs? But in two weeks, it'll definitely be finished?

And like I said in a prior comment: if there is ever a hiccup in the development cycle, games get delayed months. XBone's release date never waivered. DRM removal isn't some aesthetic change like an uprez or something (things that are added after the fact). It was important to the core of the system, the same way fleshing out a game is important so it won't be buggy. If it's buggy, they delay to fix it in order relieve pressure from potential lost money. Apparently, XBone wasn't hard to fix since at no point was it not releasing on November 22, 2013. Microsoft knew that "flipping the switch" could be done between June 19th and November 22nd, otherwise they wouldn't have announced the changes so quickly. If it was something so difficult that they didn't know how long it would take to remedy, launch would have been very different.

There is more to a patch then of course doing the patch.  A lot of QA and testing has to go along with the patch.  I could not tell you how many times I have made a simple change in my code only to have it blow up a lot of other stuff.  The bigger the patch the more changes you make, the more testing that has to be done to insure that you have not broken something in the process.  For hardware its probably even worst as you have to retest the whole system including the software.  

@BOLDED:  Nobody said it was hard to change, its the cost, time,  and effort including what features will be included at launch that would be the result.  Also you act as if MS announced the release date of the X1 before their change then never waivered on that date.  It was in September when MS annouced when they were going to release the X1.  Well after Sony and enough time to understand where they were at and what was needed to meet the date.  Think about how fast MS changed direction.  June 11-13th E3.  Almost a week later change in direction.  Just a week to make the decision, that sounds like someone told the big brass, we either do this now and can release at this time or we go with the original plan and spin the bottle.