I'm not trying to compare apples to oranges but I decided to go play some starcraft 2 the other day and I log on and there's a patch and it reminded me of New Vegas but then I got to thinking about it and I realized that Blizzard just releases a lot of small patches. Sorta like they tackle one problem at a time. I kinda like that instead of waiting a really long time. I mean in the end it's the same amount of content but this way it makes people a lot happier that something is happening. So to me it seems like a win win. Now I'm not expecting any of the patch crew to look at this and go "holy crap that's a good idea" but I just felt like saying it, after all you miss 100% of the shots you don't take...Anyway food for thought...

Doesn't Blizzard have total ownership of their own content delivery system?

Not requiring outside certification or paying fees for patches makes a significant difference in how you handle them.

Valve can toss out patches for it's own games whenever it wants as well.

That I do not know sir, but it is a good point no doubt. It certainly would make sense but Bethesda isn't exactly a small company, surely they would be able to do the same. Still though maybe it doesn't have to be as small or a a weekly thing like Blizzard, maybe a monthly thing would work out better.

I'm a little fuzzy on how it works, also - but I think showler probably has a good point, here. Blizzard already has Blizzard.net to take care of it's content delivery - it's a much more direct pipeline than what (I'm assuming) Bethesda has to contend with. Not to mention that Starcraft 2 is a PC-only title, whereas New Vegas is in need of fixes to two separate consoles (each of which with their own content delivery guidelines and hurdles,) as well as PC.

As well, I've noticed that multiplayer-oriented games tend to have a lot more incremental, small, patches with relative frequency (some games, I believe, even have regular days of the week or month set aside specifically for regular updates.) But it should probably be noted that, in general, a lot of these updates for those games tend to be more about tweaking and rebalancing the multiplayer components.

But, you know - there's still no getting around the fact that it's frustrating to be waiting for a patch to fix your game.

Sony

The multi-platform issue is understandable however I don't feel that is something that would stop them from releasing data, they did release some for the PC after all. On the Blizzard note, my roommate plays World of Warcraft and he tells me that every tuesday they do updates to the game. Perhaps if nothing else they could be a little more forward with divulging some information about what exactly is taking so long. I think that would at least appeal to some people, the worst thing they can do is be silent on the issue as we have clearly seen. From a customer stand point it is a bit irritating to have no response. It's sort of like waiting in line at the customer service and getting there only to have the person behind the counter just stare at you. Letting us in on the issue would make us feel more trusted. I don't think that's too unreasonable of a request is it?

With any luck, come Portal 2 on PS3 with Steamworks support, the console space will finally see what a maintained and supported release actually looks like. It's not a catch-all and it ain't going to make everything better overnight but it's at least a step in the right direction.

Given the sales of FO:NV, money is not a problem (although releasing through a medium such as PSN comes with A LOT of red tape).

My take is that someone cut a ton of corners during development and now are properly rewriting the code :0

To be honest, I suspect the failure of the first PC incremental patch pretty much killed any chance of follow-up incremental patches. Seriously, it was not a success and probably scared them away from attempting it again.

And yes, their PR department was an utter failure over the past month or so. Gstaff should not be entirely in charge of PR during a patch process, and the moderators should not be having to do PR at all.

Agreed but hey it looks like this topic was successful...or maybe it was just a coincidence. Either way it looks like a spot of good news for us.