Crimson Dragon developer rebalancing game via Xbox One’s cloud for launch tomorrow

Crimson Dragon launches tomorrow with the Xbox One, and it's a marked blemish on the console's launch line-up. The rail shooter, a spiritual successor to the Panzer Dragoon series, has received a number of negative reviews and criticisms over its overuse of microtransactions.

No problem: Developer Grounding Inc. is making some last-minute fixes to the game via the Xbox One's cloud — in time for launch.

"Crimson Dragon is designed to be challenging," announced Yukio Futatsugi, the game's director. "… My challenge as the game director is to find the sweet spot of adhering to my vision for the game while keeping the game from becoming too frustrating. Using the power of Xbox One’s cloud system, we can adjust this balance even after release. Based on the feedback so far, we’ve decided to make some changes even before the game is released."

Players will now earn more experience points from missions, including ones they fail. The play styles, "Casual" and "Classic," now better match their intended difficulties, and Grounding has lowered the cost of items and made jewels (the in-game credits) more widely available.

This is an interesting move — a picture of how cloud technology could enable developers to react to criticisms before their games even hit shelves. I can only imagine that this would be a positive capability, especially when it comes to pushing out bug fixes and other important updates.

Developers will have a harder time trying to smooth over deeper issues, though, and who knows whether these changes to Crimson Dragon will even be enough to change anyone's mind about it.