I'm slowly beginning to feel like I'm just a grumpy S.O.B. but there are a few things in this new console gen that I'm simply not comfortable with.

Take, for instance, the amount of patching and user agreement-agreeing that is being done on console games these days.



I'm definitely not against the ability to patch a game on a console. I think it's great and am thankful developers are able to give us new content this way, as well as fix missteps they made during the game's creation.

But that's also partly my point. Guitar Hero 3 for instance (on the 360, at least) shipped without a multiplayer quickplay option! Granted, they uploaded a patch for day one so people were able to quickly and immediately update their game in order to play locally with their friends.

That's all well and good for those of us with an internet connection that reaches the Xbox. Keep in mind however that there are also millions of Xbox (and PS3 and Wii) owners that do not have their consoles online for varying circumstances. These people must now have a single-player experience with their Guitar Hero game (I realize there's co-op career mode, but that's quite limited compared to multiplayer quickplay options).

This is interesting to me because Microsoft is so intent to not leave their people without a hard drive behind, even going so far as to somewhat cripple games to make sure they will work with core systems (Mass Effect elevators I'm looking at you... as you travel ever so slowly between floors). So why, then, is Microsoft totally fine with leaving those without an internet'd console high and dry?

It just seems to me that this fixation on online connectivity at this point in time is a mite shortsighted. Sure there are millions of people online, but think about the millions of others that you are denying.

So what do we do? Developers are human, and they make mistakes in game-development. Sure, that's fine. However, shouldn't our standards be a bit higher? If a car were to go to market without seatbelts you can bet it wouldn't be sold to anybody. If bottles of Pepsi shipped without caps there wouldn't be too many buyers. It's certainly not out of any company's reach to get their QA team to double, triple, and quadruple-check their product before it goes gold, thereby decreasing the need for ass-covering patches that would otherwise leave a large percentage of your consumers screwed.

As I mentioned earlier though, the ability to patch is a great thing. And there are those certain games where they take player feedback to patch the games in good ways, in order to restore balance to multiplayer mode among other things, for instance.

I haven't heard anybody else discussing these issues so I'm positive that I'm in the minority here, but in my opinion, the industry as a whole could benefit from shifting its focus to include those people who aren't graced with the ability to crawl the internet from their couch.