Konami has a long, rich history of creating quality products (no matter how you feel about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the Nintendo Entertainment System and its underwater bomb disarming level), but the company is risking some of its reputation with today's news that it has decided not to patch the buggy and semi-broken Microsoft Xbox 360 version of the recently released Silent Hill HD Collection. The compilation's frame rate and audio synchronization issues will remain intact on the Xbox platform while the Sony PlayStation 3 version was repaired last month. And why isn't Konami going to patch the Xbox version? Joystiq fills us in:
Konami has finally issued a long-awaited patch for the PlayStation 3 version of Silent Hill HD Collection. It's intended to resolve frame rate and audio synchronization issues, among other things. The Xbox 360 compilation, meanwhile, won't be patched due to "technical issues and resources."
To recap for those of you following at home: Xbox 360 technical issues cannot be corrected due to technical issues.Konami tells Joystiq that they will continue to sell the Xbox 360 version of the Silent Hill HD Collection. "Consumers with any questions regarding their purchase" can contact Konami customer support, the publisher told us.
That's a terrible shame and a nasty black mark on the publisher's record. It's bad enough that the original release was sent out into stores with such glaring technical issues, but to not patch those issues on one platform while taking care of another? That's just downright rude. Who's to say this behavior won't repeat down the line now that we know Konami is capable of it? This kind of thing leads me to develop some trust issues when it comes to taking a publisher's word that patches or other upgrades are incoming. Like most things in the business, I suppose I'll have to add patches to the list of things that I'll believe when I see released.
