XBox One Will Have 20 Minute Day One Update

IGN scored an exclusive interview with Xbox One Chief Platform Architect Marc Whitten in which readers asked him a ton of questions about the console that will be released November 22.

This week, he answered dozens of questions about the next-gen XBox, but one particularly controversial question came when someone asked, “How large is the Xbox One’s Day One update?” Whitten said it would be 15-20 minutes. We have to keep in mind, though, that those are Microsoft minutes, so it could be thirty seconds, it could be six hours, or it could be negative time. It all depends on network errors and the messed-up equation Microsoft uses to calculate time.

This type of day-one patch is not uncommon. The Wii U had an hour-long update when you booted it up, but to me that is very different considering it is syncing with an existing system. The Wii U update was also completely optional and the XBox update is entirely mandatory. On your Wii, you could play while the console updated, but the XBox is just a nice paperweight until it’s updated.

I am a bit outraged by the XBox One patch. I honestly don’t understand why there would be a mandatory update that players have to install.

An “update” implies there has been some change since the XBox was made. We happen to know what the changes are. They are the fixes for Microsoft’s earlier problems with digital rights management issues and offline play.

The patch will be better for players in the long run, but we shouldn’t need it because Microsoft should have anticipated months ago that players would want to trade games and play offline; they shouldn’t have waited until players were angry and boxes were already packed.