Xbox 360 Bully patch doing more harm than good
- March 26, 2008 06:56 AM PST
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Eurogamer reports today that Rockstar's Bully: Scholarship Edition patch for the Xbox 360 received a failing grade from gamers who said it created even more problems with the game.
Rockstar's Bully patch gave Xbox 360 players a wedgie
It would appear as though the "fix" that Rockstar pushed out to owners of the Xbox 360 version of Bully: Scholarship Edition in the form of a patch last Thursday might be more broken than the game it was designed to help.
Eurogamer reports today that the patch went Live on Thursday, but soon after that posters on Major Nelson's blog were accusing it of causing trouble. Among the reported problems were game freezes and audio and graphical glitches.
Rockstar chief Sam Houser said older Xbox 360 consoles could be part of the problem, and that none of the issues had shown up in QA. Eurogamer's own internal testing shows that even newer Xbox Elites are freezing up too, however. Houser said a new fix for the current fix was being worked on around the clock.
Rockstar was "horrified" by the complaints of its game crashing when Bully was released on 360 earlier this month, but moved quickly to produce a patch that they promised would fix the errors. These early reports would indicate that they moved too quickly, or that their QA/testing department is in serious need of an overhaul.
On a related note, Wii and PS2 versions of Bully: Scholarship Edition have had no major bugs reported to date.
Inexcusable. The ability to push patches to game owners after purchase should be used sparingly, if at all, and then only for extreme circumstances -- not poorly executed quality assurance. Once is a mistake, twice in a row is grounds for serious investigation and concern. Why concern? Grand Theft Auto IV may be an entirely different beast from Bully -- that is undeniable -- but the corporate atmosphere of Rockstar permeates all of its studios and developers. Will GTAIV suffer the same fate as Bully? Probably not, but maybe it will -- doubt is officially in the air now.
