Bungie.net : Halo 2 gets patched

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On EvilAvatar there’s a post from Bungie preparing everyone for a patch for Halo 2 - Bungie.net : Top Story:

“The Autoupdate should be available by the time you read this, and getting it is as simple as logging into your Xbox Live account. Xbox Live gamers are probably already familiar with the concept of an autoupdate and this one behaves exactly the same way.”

I think this is a shame. I know Halo 2 shipped with free Live, that’s how I’m enjoying it, but for the thousands who don’t have Live won’t get the progessive scan fix, ruining(?) the Halo 2 experience for them. I don’t have an HDTV widescreen, so I don’t know if this cheapens the experience or not, but it seems like it’s proof of a rushed product nonetheless. I can understand PC games shipping with problems, there are millions of hardware combinations out there and there’s no way everyone of them could be tested. But with the Xbox, I would imagine there’s no more than a few thousand televisions out there. With Bungie and Microsofts money, they could have easily tested Halo 2 on a good sample of those TVs and easily found this problem. At least it seems simple to me.

I do find it funny to see all the Xbox/Halo 2 fanboys in full-force defending Bungie, praising them with their rapidity in releasing this bug fix. Some say it’s great that it was taken care of so fast, others rationalize it off by saying it’s no big deal. However you look at it, it is setting an extremely bad precedent. I am all for new downloadable content, new maps, levels, etc. but this is not the path I want to go down.

On a side note, I’ve already updated and Quickmatch has certainly received a nice boost setting up games. Kudos for that.