Thank You Minecraft, for Faster Xbox Live Updates

Posted 01/20/2012 at 8:34am | by Paul Lilly

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For as popular as the Xbox 360 is, Microsoft's been notoriously slow to certify game updates to be rolled out via its Xbox Live service, a constant source of frustration for developers and gamers alike. That's reportedly going to change when Minecraft is ported over to Xbox Live Arcade, which could very well end up being the first game to tout frequent and constant updates.

Paddy Burns, chief technology officer at 4J Studios, the Dundee developer handling the XBLA port of Minecraft, told Edge in an interview that there will be a succession of updates to catch up with version 1.0. The only way that can happen is if Microsoft speeds up its certification process, and Burns says that's exactly what Microsoft plans to do.

"Microsoft knows that to do a similar thing that's on PC where they constantly update it, that's a very difficult thing to do on Xbox because you have to go through the full tests," Burns told Edge. "But they are quite keen to move towards that - they do see it as the future, so I think we might be the first to do constant updates."

Burns was quick to clarify that that 4J won't be skipping the Microsoft update process, and probably never will. But he his expecting the turnaround on testing to end up much faster than what it currently is.