ESPN NFL XBox players: Patch is out
 

APparently, all you have to do is connect to XBox Live in NFL and it automatically patches your game.

This makes RB a little more human, and it fixes a couple of the problems with online play

does it affect online and offline play, or just online?

Both I believe.

Patch? Patch? Isn't that what people say was horribly bad about PC games that is so wonderous about console games?

this was a legitimate patch, it was ruining online play (some players found a way to force a divergence that wouldn't count against their records, and would apply it whenever needed.

Microsoft still has to vette all patches, and you probably have to pay them to do it.

Look at Madden 2K4 for XBox.. since EA and Microsoft are on the outs it couldn't be patched, they had to go the extremely costly route of recalling disks and pressing a whole new set.

There's a slight difference here, though. Console games, since they all run on the same set of hardware, seldom have to be patched for reasons like "It won't work with your video card," or "Causes blue screen of death on every operating system known to man."

Yeah, there are still going to be issues. Even console games aren't 100% perfect, clearly. But consoles tend to have a lower bug rate because standardization of hardware takes a LOT of work out of the QA process.

ESPN NFL and Madden 2004 both needed patches, clearly, but for different reasons. In neither case was it a matter of "This game flat out won't run on your Xbox if you don't patch it." Broken feature set for Madden, sure, but that's EA's dumbass fault for refusing to put their games on Xbox Live.