Epic: Can we give gamers free updates? Microsoft: No

[Xisiqomelir]

First mistake: You are quoting something I never fucking said, you dishonest shit. I said, and I quote:
"Epic's desire to hand out free updates to its customers is amazing, and pretty much unparalleled in the gaming community."

Sorry for deobfuscating your rhetoric. I can't promise I won't do it again, though.

As I clarified, I was referring to micropayments for content that, had it been released on a PC, might otherwise be free. You latched on to this DESPITE MY CLARIFICATION and it is the primary point of your recent posts. In other words, you've been ignoring what I've written. This will come back to fucking haunt you.

Still irrelevant. There was never any intent to release for free.

All of that was to lampoon the idiocy of your using a dollar sign for MS. You know, just in case you couldn't tell because you're a moron. It's clear you have a vendetta against Microsoft and a blind spot for Nintendo and Sony, so I was pointing out their obvious lust for money that fucked over the consumer.

Nothing to do with developers not being allowed to release for free.

Actually, this isn't a red herring at all, but that's because you're stupid. It shows that the trend for charging more than you should for new content/patches has existed since the dawn of gaming, and illustrates just how much Epic stands out for its free content.

It is explicitly a red herring.
"Microsoft won't allow these developers to release content for free"
"Actually, the other two are also very greedy"

Wait, so because most companies charge money for this stuff, that doesn't mean anything? WHAT? You're not even providing reasons anymore, but this is fantastic insight to your cognitive processes.

Are you crazy? (Don't answer)

Wait...so...while you're attacking the Microsoft Live Marketplace for overpricing, comparison to other console content pricing...isn't valid? What? I mean, you ARE attacking Microsoft for wanting to charge more than something is worth, right? It's somehow not valid to point out that its competitors are doing the same?

What? I didn't mention anything at all about pricing. This is a very specific outrage, which I'll repeat yet again:
-M$ is obstructing the developers plans for a free release.

Translation, you don't want to think of the possibility that Microsoft might do something before Sony or Nintendo get a chance to, but hey.

If your hypothetical scenario comes to pass:
-Geometry Wars will still be 400 points, against the developer's wishes
-The Marble Blast Ultra update will still be dead, against the developer's wishes
-The Worms updates will still be non-free, against the developer's wishes
-Nintendo and Sony will still both have not stopped a developer from releasing free content.

I look forward to another post filled with red herrings, bombast and no counter-examples.

[Instant Sunrise]

Just who do you think foots the bill for all the bandwidth and server space for Marketplace content?

Do you really think that 11 new maps, and several multiplayer modes are going to be a few KB? Chances are, this 'free' GoW update would be several GB in size. Now imagine the bandwidth costs of pushing that out to the millions of Gears of War players. MS would have been stuck with the bill for that free update. They rightly told Epic that what they wanted was stupd.

[Ace Pace]

Wrong.Wrong.Wrong.

It is explicitly a red herring.
"Microsoft won't allow these developers to release content for free"
"Actually, the other two are also very greedy"

What? I didn't mention anything at all about pricing. This is a very specific outrage, which I'll repeat yet again:
-M$ is obstructing the developers plans for a free release.

The Xbox360, as is every console, is a closed system, built to generate money for the corporation selling it. It is not, and never will be an open ecosystem like the PC.
Why does it then suprise you that the owner of a system will want to control what content and the manner of the content releases will be on the system?
This will easily slide into 'oh, it's a free game, why dosn't MS/any other company let Publisher/Developer X release the game for the system!'
The problems with that should be obvious, and are no differant from you whining 'It's a free update, why dosn't MS let Epic do what it wants.'

Instead, MS is allowed to do as it wishs on it's own platform, and try to generate maximum revenue from it. Gears of War is currently it's largest cash cow on the system and why does it suprise you, or anyone, that MS is trying to grab every buck from it possible?

Infact, Sony is doing a similar thing with GTA on the PS2/PSP. Not content with releasing say, GTA X Stories for the PSP, they tweak content abit and release it on the PS2, for more money. Wow, I just made a totally irrelevent comparison, like you mentioning Geometry Wars or Marble Blast Ultra(wtf is that?).


Lets try to focus your argument. Answer just this question with a yes/no.
You are saying that it is bad for MS to control the manner of release for content on it's platform.

Yes or no?

[Xisiqomelir]

Lets try to focus your argument. Answer just this question with a yes/no. You are saying that it is bad for MS to control the manner of release for content on it's platform.

Yes or no?

No.

It is bad for them to forbid free releases from developers.

The bandwidth argument is absurd, Microsoft uses far more every day for the free downloads of Visual Studio and other things.

The real reason why Epic, T17 and the others were stopped, despite my joking, wasn't to fatten Microsoft's profit margins (although $4x1M certainly doesn't hurt), it was to disallow the precedent of free substantial DLC on the Live Marketplace. This is all to protect the real microrapement culprits, EA and Ubisoft, who will have to face harsh comparative scrutiny for their offerings (which will be outrageous) if Epic sets a high bar for DLC.

[Hotfoot]

Sorry for deobfuscating your rhetoric. I can't promise I won't do it again, though.

Let me deobfuscate your rhetoric. You strawmanned my position and now you're trying to cover your lying ass. Shit in a can for me and tell me its chili while you're at it.

Still irrelevant. There was never any intent to release for free.

Clarify or conceed bitch tits.

Nothing to do with developers not being allowed to release for free.

But everything to do with your own prejudices. Prejudices which are clearly shown in your previous posts, where you condemn something simply for being made by Microsoft. Heaven forbid I should point out that you're willing to ignore valid points just so you can take a cheap shot at a company that you don't like.

It is explicitly a red herring.
"Microsoft won't allow these developers to release content for free"
"Actually, the other two are also very greedy"

Now you can't even keep your own talking points straight you stupid shit. This argument was about the longstanding inflation of price in PC games throughout the history of gaming, not Sony or Nintendo. Way to fail at keeping your own bullshit arguments straight.

But hey, let's spend a little time on your mistake. Pointing out that Nintendo and Sony charge more than they should for content goes straight to the point of the console marketplaces, which is that Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft decide how much to sell the content for, NOT the developers. This is due to the nature of consoles in general, which is that the company that makes the hardware has far more control over how that hardware is used than it is with PCs. This is one of the major points I've been making, that consoles, due to their more controlled nature, are more prone to this sort of abuse than PCs. Since Microsoft doesn't make the actual computer, they can't tell you how to use it. They even have limited options in telling you how to use your operating system, which is why free content for PCs even exists. I'm sure that if they had the control over PCs that they have over their consoles, we'd likely never see free content again. Of course, personal computing would be set back several decades in the process.

Wait, so because most companies charge money for this stuff, that doesn't mean anything? WHAT? You're not even providing reasons anymore, but this is fantastic insight to your cognitive processes.

Are you crazy? (Don't answer)

Oh yes, let's spew insults at each other without making a valid point! THAT IS A GOOD IDEA! Make a point or conceed, motherfucker.

What? I didn't mention anything at all about pricing. This is a very specific outrage, which I'll repeat yet again:
-M$ is obstructing the developers plans for a free release.

This is all about pricing you stupid fucking shithead. Microsoft wants to charge cash monies, Epic doesn't. There is an argument about price, as in, should there be one, and ultimately how much it should be if there is to be one. Microsoft isn't stopping development on the release, they're stopping Epic from releasing it without letting Microsoft make some money off it. This goes back to my point about expansion packs that should be patches, sequels that should be expansion packs, and micropayments. By the way, publishers having control over the cost of what the developers produce is nothing new, and in this case, Live Marketplace is the publisher, because it would be paying for the transmission of the information.

If your hypothetical scenario comes to pass:
-Geometry Wars will still be 400 points, against the developer's wishes
-The Marble Blast Ultra update will still be dead, against the developer's wishes
-The Worms updates will still be non-free, against the developer's wishes
-Nintendo and Sony will still both have not stopped a developer from releasing free content.

Way to evade. What next, running from the thread without a word because you have no points left standing? You didn't answer the fucking point, you're just going in a loop repeating your previous arguments. If Microsoft folds to Epic, then they are setting a precedent which, if successful and increases sales in some way, will more likely be seen in the future. But hey, keep bitching and nitpicking, that makes a point.

I look forward to another post filled with red herrings, bombast and no counter-examples.

I look forward to another post with baldface lies, evasions, and general idiocy.

By the way Xissy, I know that cutting excessive quotes can be somewhat confusing, but it pays to keep track of your own fucking arguments. Let's keep things straight next time, shall we? Your strawmans are more than enough to make you look like a dishonest shit. Fucking up your points just makes you look stupid on top of it.

[Vendetta]

Do you really think that 11 new maps, and several multiplayer modes are going to be a few KB? Chances are, this 'free' GoW update would be several GB in size. Now imagine the bandwidth costs of pushing that out to the millions of Gears of War players. MS would have been stuck with the bill for that free update. They rightly told Epic that what they wanted was stupd.

Even Shivering Isles is only just under 1GB. Chances are, the Gears update would be half a gig or thereabouts. (the last update, two free maps, was just shy of 100MB, if I recall)

[Ace Pace]

Lets try to focus your argument. Answer just this question with a yes/no. You are saying that it is bad for MS to control the manner of release for content on it's platform.

Yes or no?

No.

It is bad for them to forbid free releases from developers.

Why? Because HEAVEN FORBID that the content distributor control the content. That'd be like saying, the Theater Owner should allow every movie studio to freely display movies on his screens just because they'll do it for free. Why is it wrong? For the same reason your next argument is wrong.

The bandwidth argument is absurd, Microsoft uses far more every day for the free downloads of Visual Studio and other things.

Prove it. MS providing free downloads of it's toolset and utilities indirectly makes it more money. Providing free maps does no such thing.

The real reason why Epic, T17 and the others were stopped, despite my joking, wasn't to fatten Microsoft's profit margins (although $4x1M certainly doesn't hurt), it was to disallow the precedent of free substantial DLC on the Live Marketplace. This is all to protect the real microrapement culprits, EA and Ubisoft, who will have to face harsh comparative scrutiny for their offerings (which will be outrageous) if Epic sets a high bar for DLC.

So? Sony has just as insane marketplace prices. Again, lack of content for the PS3 prevents a direct comparison, but just check history. Nintendo..HOW much are they charging for Virtual Console games? I expect you to immidietly start flaming Ninny for releasing old games with an insane markup.

Regarding the EA and Ubisoft quote, HOW much is Sony charging for GT HD cars and shit? Or PS3 home?

Infact, On GT HD

The pricing reported in the Famitsu piece indicated that cars would cost between 50-100 yen ($0.43-$0.85) and courses between 200-500 yen ($1.71-$4.26). There are approximiately 750 cars and 50 tracks available for purchase in the GT: HD Classic. Let's do the math:
750 cars for $0.50-$1.00 (Sony will round-up, don't you think?)
50 tracks for $1.50-$4.50

Infact, same article.

Phil Harrison alluded to a possible future like this one last June in OPM.
I'll give you an example; Kazunori [Yamauchi, producer of the Gran Turismo series] would kill me for this: Imagine Gran Turismo shipping on a disc with one car and one track. And then you can browse, online, a dynamic circuit of vehicles that's growing every day because either the car manufacturers are adding new vehicles or we're adding new vehicles. And you can see a specific-type car that's being called up and say, "I think I'll play with that one. Let me download and play it." Maybe the business model allows you to play it for a day; maybe the business model allows you to own it forever. But that content is now yours on your hard drive. Or [maybe you could download] new tracks, new music, whole games.

Gee, I think that sounds ALOT like what MS is doing. Infact, it's the same thing, except MS dosn't microcharge per map or per car(whatever you want to call it) but a larger bundle.

More info on GT HD, which seems like a great comparison.

One other piece of the GT HD puzzle is the idea of the marketplace. Showing a mock-up of the Sony GT online shopping center, Yamauchi said players will be able to download new cars, tracks, and exclusive items for their version of GT HD. No price point has been announced for any of the items that will be available, nor do we know how downloads will be made available in different regions. For example, if a player is "shopping" in North America, will he or she only be able to purchase cars available in that area? Will cars be available in packs or as individual units? At this point, it's still up in the air. Furthermore, the idea of purchasing new cars and tracks brings up the rather obvious question of unlockable content in the next GT. What incentive will there be for players to unlock cars, if they can merely whip out their credit card and simply buy exactly what they want? Nonetheless, it seems as though a balance will be struck between purchased and unlocked content in the game's after-release support.

Oh, wait, lets be general. How much is Sony charging for online downloads? Gamespot

In Europe, the Network downloads weigh in at between 2.99 and 9.99 euros, or approximately £2-7 ($4-13), meaning that the UK cost is in line with the rest of Europe. Prices are slightly cheaper than the Wii's Virtual Console, where games are priced at between £3.75 (500 Wii Points) and £7.50 (1,000 Wii Points), and the Xbox 360 Live Arcade, where downloadable games cost between £3.20 (400 points) and £9.60 (1,200 points).

The PlayStation Network will also include the option to download extra content for games and videos, on a sliding scale of charges that will start at 0.99 euros (70p).

Whoa, abit cheaper, but they still want money. I guess they do have a reason! Maybe it's bandwidth! Oh wait, because MS lets you DL VS for free, it means it can't be the real reason.
And whats that, extra content for games, costing actual money? Whoa, I guess MS isn't alone in this, and infact, it's a perfectly rational move for any gaming company! Charging for extra content for a closed platform is perfectly fine, and logical.

[Instant Sunrise]

Right now on Xbox Live Marketplace there is a Map Pack for Gears of War, it is 98.62 MB and contains 2 maps.

This means that each map is roughly 50 MB. Rough math means that this map pack/update would be 500-600 MB, now spread that across the millions of people play GoW online you you get a huge bandwidth bill. That's a cost that MS has to eat. Unlike your Visual Studio example, MS doesn't have anyway to recoup that loss.

[Ace Pace]

Even Shivering Isles is only just under 1GB. Chances are, the Gears update would be half a gig or thereabouts. (the last update, two free maps, was just shy of 100MB, if I recall)

Right now on Xbox Live Marketplace there is a Map Pack for Gears of War, it is 98.62 MB and contains 2 maps.

This means that each map is roughly 50 MB. Rough math means that this map pack/update would be 500-600 MB, now spread that across the millions of people play GoW online you you get a huge bandwidth bill. That's a cost that MS has to eat. Unlike your Visual Studio example, MS doesn't have anyway to recoup that loss.

Lets call it 500MB. Let's call the playerbase static, at 3 million players.
That comes out to 1,500,000,000,000, that comes out to 1,500GB of bandwidth, JUST for the content. Nevermind the bandwidth expended in all the stages of downloading something, trivial compared to this, but also relevent.
This amount of bandwidth is NOT free. Infact, it's ludicrously expensive.

[Xisiqomelir]

Why? Because HEAVEN FORBID that the content distributor control the content. That'd be like saying, the Theater Owner should allow every movie studio to freely display movies on his screens just because they'll do it for free.

This isn't a good analogy. Theatre seating and screentimes have real physical limits. Downloads are far less constrained.

Prove it. MS providing free downloads of it's toolset and utilities indirectly makes it more money. Providing free maps does no such thing.

Microsoft would clearly derive an intangible goodwill benefit from allowing free content. That drives game sales and strengthens customer loyalty.

So? Sony has just as insane marketplace prices. Again, lack of content for the PS3 prevents a direct comparison, but just check history. Nintendo..HOW much are they charging for Virtual Console games? I expect you to immidietly start flaming Ninny for releasing old games with an insane markup.

I don't buy VC games, check the Wii launch threads.

Sony has a PS3 game based on a 100% free DLC model in the works, made a developer who initially pitched the idea to Microsoft but was rejected because of that model.

Regarding the EA and Ubisoft quote, HOW much is Sony charging for GT HD cars and shit? Or PS3 home?

Home is free. And GTHD is a Polyphony game and was never intended to be free, and therefore not germane to the issue.

And whats that, extra content for games, costing actual money? Whoa, I guess MS isn't alone in this, and infact, it's a perfectly rational move for any gaming company! Charging for extra content for a closed platform is perfectly fine, and logical.

I never said DLC should be free. I'm saying that if a developer wants it to be free, it's not right for the platform holder to charge for it to protect the reputations of the microtransactioning developers.

[Vendetta]

This isn't a good analogy. Theatre seating and screentimes have real physical limits. Downloads are far less constrained.

Tell that to a WoW player next time the patch servers melt when a new patch comes out and everyone needs it all at once

[Ace Pace]

This isn't a good analogy. Theatre seating and screentimes have real physical limits. Downloads are far less constrained.

So do downloads, unless you want MS to suddenly develop a P2P model to save on bandwidth costs. That'd be brilliant, except developing one is not easy. Infact, it's quite complicated.

Microsoft would clearly derive an intangible goodwill benefit from allowing free content. That drives game sales and strengthens customer loyalty.

Prove that this would happen. Prove that:
1) This will drive games sales up.
2) Strength Customer loyalty.
These are not obvious. They might happen, but not neccesarily, and may be not considered a good enough Return on Investment(do I need to explain this concept?) for MS to do it.

I don't buy VC games, check the Wii launch threads.

Now thats a fucking red herring, I don't buy any console, does that mean I'm not allowed to comment on them?
EDIT: You know what?
That was like...the biggest non sense sentence I've seen in weeks.

Sony has a PS3 game based on a 100% free DLC model in the works, made a developer who initially pitched the idea to Microsoft but was rejected because of that model.

One free game does not excuse a platform that is just as money hungry as the Xbox360.

Home is free. And GTHD is a Polyphony game and was never intended to be free, and therefore not germane to the issue.

Home is free, extra content is not. Epics content is licened to MS and was never 'meant' to be free except in Epics plans.
The point you are dodging, is that MS is not the only one doing this, and infact, is perfectly normal.
I've just noticed that the FIRST Gears of War mappack, of two maps is 100% FREE.

I never said DLC should be free. I'm saying that if a developer wants it to be free, it's not right for the platform holder to charge for it to protect the reputations of the microtransactioning developers.

If the platform holder is the distributor, then the platform holder is fully allowed to charge for content that will in all likelyhood cost it far more then you can guess.

Do you want me to elaborate on the VERY complicated process of releasing any content to Xbox Live? I promise you that it's a process that costs Microsoft several millions before the content is ever uploaded.
Lets lay out parts of the process.
Basic Quality assurance, Microsoft goes through with a fine honed comb over every peice, every asset and the final result together. Any bug is frequently a show stopper and sent back to the developer.
Localisation, this is more then just repackaging labels, some countries have specific rules regarding content(such as Germanys no Nazis law), and all this must be checked against assets. If the assets need to be translated, there is a high cost for that.
There are some more, non technical steps for a certification to release to Xbox Live, I could drudge my memories with an Xbox Live developer, but I think you get the point.

All this happens before any content is released. Once the content is released, it must be piped out, quickly to millions of customers. This is very bandwidth intensive. Infact, a good example of the amount of bandwidth involved can be seen in the HL2 launch and Steam. Valve had servers setup for the tasks, the bandwidth involved crushed them. It's NOT the bandwidth for your typical website, nor for any large one, it's usually several orders of magnitude above.


My point in this long winded peice of text? Don't assume releasing anything to a closed system is easy, nor is it free. It's an expensive process that has to be returned in order to have value.

[Instant Sunrise]

Funny how the Gears of War map pack that's out now is free then. You know why? Because The Discovery Channel footed the bill.

Source: Major Nelson blog-post announcing the download

You CAN have free stuff on Xbox Live Marketplace. For "Kameo: Element of Power" there's lots of free Marketplace Content up. The size of the largest download? 46 MB.

The case with GoW is one of scale. The Kameo packs weren't even 100 MB, and barely anybody plays it. With Gears of War, you're talking about pushing content that is 500+ to 3 million people.

[Erik von Nein]

This amount of bandwidth is NOT free. Infact, it's ludicrously expensive.

How expensive do you think it would be?

[Ace Pace]

This amount of bandwidth is NOT free. Infact, it's ludicrously expensive.

How expensive do you think it would be?

The The fastest numbers I could find. I make no statment for accuracy.
The numbers there are thus:

For an ultra high speed connection, 100MBpS, the cost per MB is $50, or $5000 per month. Now this seems abit high, so lets quote other numbers.

From here on youtube.

their monthly bandwidth costs (excluding other expenses) has reached $1 million for approximately 6 Petabytes of data transferred during the same period.

6 PB is six million gigabytes or the equivalent of 1.25 million DVDs downloaded. This means that the price at which Youtube buys a Terabyte of bandwidth is $167. In comparison, 1&1 Internet sells one Terabyte of bandwidth for $9.99.

9.99 per TB? Sign me up! Except there are special deals for specific corporations, and we have no way to find the price.

A third source gives a differant number.

Using Amazon S3 as one of many models, If you look at raw cost of moving 1 terabyte of traffic this equates to $153.60 per month. This does not factor in storage cost, server cost etc.

All these numbers are differant, but the last one adds another peice of data, hosting costs.

Hosting a giant server/data center farm is not simple, and costs quite abit of money as well.

We have no idea what kind of deals Microsoft gets for bandwidth, but it, along with Google, are paying quite alot, enough that both are considering laying their own fiber lines to decrease bandwidth costs.

[Xisiqomelir]

Bump for Microsoft's Live Manager JJ Richards is lying about this in a new Games for Windows interview (or maybe Epic's Tim Sweeney is):

GFW: Yeah, that makes sense. What about requiring third-party developers to charge for content that they might prefer to offer free of charge?
JJR: Developers are still in control, on the console as well as on PC. They choose what to do.

GFW: Epic is another story with Gears of War, but if they said, "We don't want to charge for whatever content we're doing," would that be their decision to make?
JJR: I think developers determine what to make and how to make it. If they wanted to use PayPal in Live Marketplace, we're going to say, guys, we're using Microsoft points.

GFW: I'm talking entirely free. No points, no payments.
JJR: We're certainly not forcing anybody to do anything.

[Erik von Nein]

All these numbers are differant, but the last one adds another peice of data, hosting costs.

Hosting a giant server/data center farm is not simple, and costs quite abit of money as well.

We have no idea what kind of deals Microsoft gets for bandwidth, but it, along with Google, are paying quite alot, enough that both are considering laying their own fiber lines to decrease bandwidth costs.

Oh, yeah, I get that server farms are expensive, as well as hosting the data, but I was just wondering what the costs could be and whether or not it could be covered in the X-Box live subscription. Thanks for finding the numbers, though.

[Ace Pace]

Bump for Microsoft's Live Manager JJ Richards is lying about this in a new Games for Windows interview (or maybe Epic's Tim Sweeney is):

GFW: Yeah, that makes sense. What about requiring third-party developers to charge for content that they might prefer to offer free of charge?
JJR: Developers are still in control, on the console as well as on PC. They choose what to do.

GFW: Epic is another story with Gears of War, but if they said, "We don't want to charge for whatever content we're doing," would that be their decision to make?
JJR: I think developers determine what to make and how to make it. If they wanted to use PayPal in Live Marketplace, we're going to say, guys, we're using Microsoft points.

GFW: I'm talking entirely free. No points, no payments.
JJR: We're certainly not forcing anybody to do anything.

We don't have enough data and it's irrelevent. There is nothing problematic in requiring payment for content on a network that MS pays to distribute. Stop.Ignoring.My.Points.

[Erik von Nein]

EDIT: Nevermind. Confusion there for a second.

[Ace Pace]

Oh, yeah, I get that server farms are expensive, as well as hosting the data, but I was just wondering what the costs could be and whether or not it could be covered in the X-Box live subscription. Thanks for finding the numbers, though.

Part of the XboxLive subscription, yes, is paying for the gigantic hardware and software that runs it. Other parts are rolled into profit, etc.

I don't have exact breakdowns, and no one outside of MS has.

EDIT: no, it was to Xissy.

[Erik von Nein]

Part of the XboxLive subscription, yes, is paying for the gigantic hardware and software that runs it. Other parts are rolled into profit, etc.

I don't have exact breakdowns, and no one outside of MS has.

True. I guess it's pretty much baseless speculation at this point. Ah, well.

[Hotfoot]

Hey Xissy, just because I pointed out that you run from debates that you're losing doesn't mean that it's a good idea to prove my point by running from both Ace and myself.

[Netko]

There are some more, non technical steps for a certification to release to Xbox Live, I could drudge my memories with an Xbox Live developer, but I think you get the point.

If you have the time, I'd be interested in those out of curiosity. I love hearing details about such processes (yeah, I'm weird in that way).

As for the debate about bandwidth - yeah, as soon as you move out of the really-small-traffic-that-could-be-served-with-a-home-connection area, the costs balloon like crazy, especially for the insane amounts of peak bandwidth something like Live requires. It's telling that Blizzard moved to a hybrid p2p model for WoW patches - they simply could not buy up enough peak bandwidth to ensure smooth patching, while on the other hand a huge chunk of that bandwidth was not needed most of the time. There were also posts threatening that subscription costs would have needed to go up to foot the bandwidth bill if the system wasn't implemented (although that might be a somewhat dubious statement in light of massive profits WoW is bringing Blizzard).

[Ace Pace]

I need to run to sleep, so here's abit more data. The initial steps are listed here. By some dev.

For the actual release, the steps are roughly as follows, bear in mind this is for the Xbox Live Arcade and the steps for normal releases might be different. Again, can't remember that much and will have to go through my notes or email the guy again.
Note: This is release steps, at this stage, the game is feature complete, has passed a significant number of milestones with MS, internal milestones, etc.
QA: This is a multi step process that tests on every possible configuration of an Xbox/Xbox360, failure at any step, and back to the developer. This step is possibly the longest and easiest to fail. MS has quite high standards apparently.
Localisation: As I detailed above, country specific changes, language translations, help file translation. This is expensive, but not particularly complex.

These two stages are the release, but in the middle, you need to be asset certified for the platform. What that means for example, is having all your assets be in HD resolution. This means no using 480P assets up sampled. Expensive. You have to fully utilise Xbox surround sound, again, not so simple. Now days I imagine you need support for Xbox Live Vision or whatever they are calling their camera.
Your code has to fit to some specific MS standard which I'm not fully aware of. Parts of this standard might be available at MS XNA documentation, otherwise, it's under NDA. In fact, shit loads of stuff are under NDA.

Tangent: This is why XNA is In fact, a cheap marketing move. MS won't let any of the Xbox360 amateur made content onto the open Xbox Live Arcade without passing it through the above process, because all the assets have to be the same level of quality. The likelihood of an amateur game developer having the several millions to pass the game certification process is small, if the developer has, he's a company and therefor not using XNA.

I hope thats abit more info then I posted before.

EDIT: You're not weird. I'm a hobbyist summer jobbing at a game development company, THATS weird.

[Netko]

Thanks!