For a while now, Towerborne was being touted as a day one on Game Pass game. It was set to release in 2024 and it would launch on the service when it did. The plan has since changed to launching on Steam in 2024 with Xbox launching in 2025. According to Xbox Era, <a href=”https://xboxera.com/2024/08/27/why-is-towerborne-launching-on-steam-before-xbox/” target=”_blank”>one of the main reasons why is because it does not require certification to push out builds</a>. Even though Xbox has an early access program, each update needs to be certified and that can take up to a week to process. My question is, should Xbox be more like PC?
Yes, when a game is fully released then maybe there should be a certification process to ensure that it will work, but early access games are basically in beta. A game that isn’t fully released yet is going to have bugs, so isn’t it better to push updates as fast as possible and not have to wait for them to be certified? Some games will release updates on console and they will run worse than before the update, so what does the certification process even do? The idea behind them is that the update will not disrupt the existing game. I’d argue that having the game run worse, would be disrupting the game. Xbox isn’t the only one that has them, Playstation and Nintendo does too, but they don’t typically have early access games on their systems.
If Xbox allowed patches to be uploaded, then they could have multiple updates a week or even in a day, getting the game to be updated and fixed faster. Microsoft has always wanted a PC in the living room and with Xbox being their living room PC, then maybe it’s time they start treating it more like a PC and less like a console when it comes to game updates.
What do you think about the way Xbox handles game updates? Should they forego the certification process for early access games?
