No, it’s not Xbox Live Gold
Indeed, although we say it in jest, it is not a game that Microsoft offers with Xbox Live Gold, because the term applies to the whole industry. In other words, all development studios express themselves in the same way and mean exactly the same thing when they use the expression “this or that game is already Gold”. And what does that mean? Good, one of the happiest moments a studio can experience development studio can experiment.
This is explained by the fact that the Gold version of a game is the one used for factory shipping. which produces the Blu-rays (or DVDs, CD-ROMs, cartridges and cassettes at the time) to duplicate them and start production of the game before it goes on sale on the announced date. In other words, this is the definitive version that we will all have in our hands when we go to the store to buy the game. An example of such an epic and exciting moment for a studio is, for example, the one that Neil Druckman announced on his Twitter feed on the occasion of the film’s release Uncharted 4 was already gold.
Every journey must have an end. #gold #uncharted4 pic.twitter.com/hdEF50hj3E
— Neil Druckmann (@Neil_Druckmann) 19 mars 2016
In the disk image, you can see important information, such as the number of recording units. release candidate (RC), or the game’s internal serial number used in the PlayStation universe since the 1990s, which serves as an identifier of sorts: SCEA_17 (Sony Computer Entertainment America), plus a closing date of March 2016 (the game was released on May 10).
Now, then, digital distribution is not the same And this Gold version is anecdotal, because the production times are infinitely shorter and allow the team to correct any bugs that still exist in the Gold versions. Hence the day one (launch) patches that are already integrated into the version that we download from the digital store when we prefer this format to the physical format.
Where does the expression come from?
The video game industry has also made its own this expression that comes from the world of music where they also worked on the basis of obtaining a duplicating master, which was once gold in color, hence its origin.
These common processes that for years have accompanied video games and the music industry (for example in the 80s with cassettes, or already in the 90s with compact discs) have left the expression that a project has reached the Gold version and therefore is ready to be manufactured and produced in sufficient quantity to bring it to stores so that players, in this case, can grab it.
