Paddy Burns, Chief Technology Officer at 4J Studios (the team handling the XBLA version of Mojang’s smash hit Minecraft) recently told Edge that big changes may be coming to Microsoft’s title update certification process on Xbox Live. As of now, the certification process takes weeks, forcing players to wait for an update or patch that has already been finished by developers. Burns states 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. 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.”
Many believe that Microsoft’s certification process is one of the things holding titles on Xbox Live back. Any streamlining of the process would certainly be welcomed by both fans and the development community alike. Games like Minecraft, which are heavily reliant on constant updates would certainly benefit from a speedier update process. While Burns states that he doesn’t expect Minecraft on XBLA to be updated as much as the PC version of the game in the end, this is certainly a move in the right direction. We can only hope that we see these changes implemented in the very near future.
Source: Edge
