Xbox 360 - no updates for digitally bought/acquired games

So, this has been a really huge problem for myself since realising this was actually a thing. To put it bluntly: if you digitally download/purchase a game off the Xbox 360 dashboard, a huge percentage of said games simply won't have title updates available
to the user, something of which is readily available to users with the physical copy of the game. This then means technical problems etc. within digitally-released games can't simply be fixed up with a routine patch.

Now, I purchase/acquire most of my games through the Games on Demand section on the 360 dashboard, so you could imagine this has proved quite problematic when I can't download a simple update for, for example, Dark Souls, meaning no patch to irradicate
HUGE framerate issues throughout the game. As another example, the recently available Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes given to XBL subscribers via the Games with Gold campaign(free digital games). There was apparently two secret missions released for the game,
one for XB360/One users and the other for PS3/4 players, though later both parties could acquire the former console-exclusive content through a patch update. Due to my digital aquirement of the game, the patch containing the former ps3/4-only mission simply
isn't available. Bare in mind that these aren't the only titles with a digital handicap, these were just recent examples; I could list many, many more.

First time I actually acknowledged that this was happening was with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 last summer when receiving the game through the GWG program. I had recently had the disc copy of the game several years before, but sold it and deleted
all of the related data. The difference being that back then I can vividly remember 2-3 online patches for the game at boot up, while this time I wasn't met with an update prompt presumably because this particular copy of the game was digitally downloaded.
This all meant that I couldn't play the online section. To fix this I had to scrape through years/minutes of recently downloaded items in the 'Download History' tab to then hopefully find the BF update that I had downloaded years before when in possession
of the disc copy. Luckily that was a success, but that solution is sadly not an option with titles that I haven't previously had disc copies of.

Something to note is that neither of my digital copies of games have a code at the very bottom of each main menu(for example: Ver. 00.2), something that I picked up upon when troubleshooting my most recent MGS: GZ issue whilst browsing various MGS-related
internet forums. Those within the various forums said that "there should be a version code at the very bottom righthand corner", but these were owners/users of the physical copy of the game; those, like me, that only possessed the digital version reported
the exact same problems. This leads me to believe that these famed digital copies are strictly nonupdatable versions of the game in their rawest and earliest release form.



Does anyone have a fix for this problem?

Cheers.

:)

 

what does "You can use this app for now or buy it to own forever" mean? I already bought it!

Evil I think its because the update caused some DRM issues. A year or 2 ago I had 3 xbox 360 games that I had bought digitally & then after an update I was unable to play them UNLESS my 360 is connected to Live. No Live, no games. M$ never fixed the problem.
This is why I should've learned my lesson with digital purchases.

 

I bought a game digitally through my Xbox 360, and I was wondering what will the name of my purchase will be on my monthly statement bill?

Alright so last month ago I bought 2 games. One of the games was bought digitally through my Xbox 360, and the other game was bought online through the Xbox website. So I got my bill today and the game I bought through my Xbox 360 was named ¨MSFT Billing¨,
and the other one I bought through the Xbox website was named MSFT Xbox Live¨. So I'm planning to buy a game digitally through my Xbox 360, and I was wondering when I get it bill will it be named after MSFT Billing, or MSFT Xbox Live?

P.S I'm using a mastercard

 

Hi, A lot of the Games on Demand digital games now download the update automatically with the game, so chances are that is the reason why you are not seeing the update prompt. The battlefield one is different as the update for it has to be downloaded separately
from the marketplace. Some other games are similar like that, e.g Burnout paradise, you also have to download the update from the marketplace and some Need for Speed games are like that too.

 

Points taken. And it turns out I did have an update for Dark Souls, I found it in the DS data folder(derp), though the update didn't seem to fix the issue with extreme framerate problems throughout the game experience like the update was apparently(going
by online sources) supposed to correct.

This still doesn't explain the MGS: Ground Zeroes update not appearing: I've checked both the in-game menu and dashboard/extras section for the game. Just a little mad, because apparently the added mission I'm missing out on is supposedly amazing.

But thanks anyway, your answer fixes at least some of my problems.

 

The problem with MGS: Ground Zeroes is a common issue, which is affecting other gamers too. You need to contact the developers about it to find out why the update has not been released on the Xbox 360 yet.

 

As mentioned before, games that are downloadable titles, normally have all current updates applied to them already. MGS is Konami's issue, and their support for their customers has been less than stellar. :s