Capcom's Christian "Sven" Svensson jumped on the Unity Boards to clarify what it means to submit a game as a downloadable title, in this case Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, and if the release dates will differ between the XBox and Playstation versions.Is HD Remix getting the same release date on both systems?
Sven: It's submitted on both platforms but not approved on either yet so we'll have to see. *Fingers crossed*.
What is the process for submitting a downloadable title and what purpose does it serve?
Sven: Submission serves several purposes for first parties and publishers.
It's the last step of many in an approval process. For most first parties, there is a concept approval phase, where you tell them broadly, what you're making, what features it has, what elements of the SDK and/or first party services it's going to use. If there's anything outside the "norm" that gets cleared up and either approved or disapproved in that process. And then you move into development in earnest.
In some cases, there's what's called a Phase 2 approval, which is typically a demonstration of playable code for evaluation against the original approval and some basic checks against what's allowed/not allowed on the system in general.
Submission is the last step. Code and all manuals, packaging, etc. are submitted for evaluation against a slew of requirements. The code side in particular has tons of TCRs/TRCs that are technical compliance requirements. So for example, you may have to make sure your network code operates without dropping people at certain bandwidth and packetloss restrictions. All error messages under given conditions have to be exactly standardized by platform. When you hit start, it HAS to pause and/or go to an options menu, etc. When I push the 360 button, it brings up the appropriate blade menu or the Home button, it brings up the XMB. Basically, adherence to all standards such that your experience in one game is consistent with your experience in the next.
Bug checking and avoidance of crashes is of course a huge part of the process too. First parties don't want a buggy mess on their systems. That said, they have usually between 10-15 days to get a report back to the waiting publisher/developer with the list of everything that is "not approved". On bigger games (like GTA or Fallout) that's only so much test time that there could be things that are missed (personally, I'm amazed at how bug free GTA is and I'm playing Fallout3 on PC with no problems so far). First parties are actually very, very good at catching things (even things that teams and publishers own extensive testing don't catch).
Testing in general is for the purpose of catching and fixing bugs. But in this age of very, very complex systems, I think I could say with confidence that there isn't a 360/PS3 game in the market that doesn't have a few minor bugs somewhere if you dig deep enough. The games and systems are just too complex and sometimes the bugs are just so minor/not reproducable on a consistent basis that it's not worth the expense of fixing them. First party testing is meant to be another filter to keep it to minor bugs. If it weren't for that process, I'd bet there'd be FAR more complaints about certain games than there are.
