At least when patches cost $40k, you have an incentive to make a really, really solid first release. I wonder if it leads to less buggy software in general? (obviously this is kind of a counterexample to that...)
> At least when patches cost $40k, you have an incentive to make a really, really solid first release.
The rule applies to all titles (not just XBLA -- I remember looking at the official MS documents stating how much it is), and you'd think that it would be pretty good incentive, but for some games it's really not. I believe Call of Duty Black Ops is on its eighth title update. Other games such as Forza and Halo (which are/were both MS studios) actually have had very, very few updates. Halo 3 had two total, while Reach I believe had none -- both of which are very well-coded games.
I think you can generalize and say that it does lead to less buggy software in general, but it really depends on the studio.
