Everyone needs to behave and be respectful of others, this includes respect to those that have been banned. Just because they are not here or cannot read the posts does not mean you should not show them the same amount of respect as everyone else, to do anything else makes you no better than the individual who was banned.
This is fair warning to EVERYONE.
NSG, it is true that the publisher (EA in the case of Nightfire, Activision in the case of THPS3, MS in the case of Halo PC) has control on releases of patches and other materials pertaining to the game.
The only game we will discuss is Halo, the other games and problems are well documented.
In many previous posts and interviews which you may have missed, it has been stated very clearly that MS, Bungie and Gearbox are devoting resources to very strong post-launch support of Halo.
This support includes the following:
1) Bug fixes, this is very general but the most serious bugs get highest priority. In the 2-3 weeks since Halo was locked down to go to manufacturing, we have found several bugs that we intend to fix immediately or that we have already fixed.
Gearbox and MS ALREADY have a patch that is almost ready for release. We worked straight through the lock down period to insure a strong launch for Halo.
We already have scheduled out the next 2 patches or updates, expect to hear a lot more information on what these will contain in the future. We have a very strong plan that carries product support into the New Year. At that time we will of course make further plans. Right now we are very focused on the next 4 months and how we can improve Halo.
2) Game improvements, this area can sometimes overlap with bug fixes. Game improvements include better support for certain hardware and configurations. This area includes better performance overall and for areas such as rendering and networking. This sometimes involves the hardware manufacturers also, such as ATI and nVidia.
3) Additional features\Bonus features. This includes dedicated servers, access to new features in the UI, new content such as weapons, vehicles, levels, and new features in general.
4) Editing support. This includes the organized release of tools, documents, tutorials, examples, etc... related to end user editing. We do not intend to just "dump the tools" and related resources out into the public. We are organizing everything and doing it right. Gearbox and Bungie are very excited about the prospects for end user editing.
In addition, we are involved with the CPL. The CPL requires a lot of things in order for a game to be competition worthy, expect to hear information about this in the coming weeks.
Expect more news in the coming days and weeks on what will be released in support of Halo for the PC and its community.
I hope this clarifies things.
David Mertz
Gearbox Software