Author: Jason Fitzpatrick / Source: How-To Geek
The last thing you want on Christmas Day is for your kids to be unable to play the game console they’ve waited so long to enjoy. Read on as we highlight why you need to pre-game your console gift giving experience.
Why Do I Want To Do This?
If you’re not a gamer yourself, you might be curious as to why we’d recommend unpacking your child’s game console and setting it up just to turn right back around and repack it for them to open on Christmas Day.
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Unlike the game consoles of today the consoles of yesteryear, ranging from the early first-generation game consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey right up to fifth-generation consoles like the Sony PlayStation, had hard-coded firmware that rarely (if ever) received any update.
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System you bought back in the 1990s is still running the same operating code that it shipped with (and most likely still plugging along just fine despite 20 years of no updates). Game consoles were simply designed differently back then because there was no easy mechanism by which they could be updated.
Starting with the sixth-generation of game consoles and the introduction of over-the-network updates for the original Xbox game console suddenly updating your game console became a thing. That thing has proved to be persistent element of modern gaming and the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii, and Switch all feature over-the-network updates as do many handheld gaming platforms like newer versions of the Nintendo DS product line (so, in fact, the tips in this PSA also apply to portable game devices too).
Not only do the game consoles themselves need updates but the games we play on them need updates (and often need to be downloaded in the first place before we can even begin to update and play them).
Why does it matter, in relation to your gift giving, that modern consoles all have over-the-network updates? It matters because these updates are large, fairly frequent, and even on a good day can take a bit of time to download and apply. A good day for console updating would be a random weekday in the middle of the year when network traffic is at a low point.
A bad day for updates? Christmas Day, when millions of people around the globe open up their Christmas presents, plug them in, and slam the game maker’s networks with requests for updates. What might have been anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours worth of updating on a regular day might not even happen at all on Christmas Day because of the increased traffic. Compounding the problem is the fact that many game consoles are very insistent on applying updates and once the process is started you’re stuck waiting it out.
To further compound the problem, in years past we’ve seen DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks launched against game networks right around the holiday. In 2014, for example, a large DDoS attack against both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live brought both networks to their knees and made everything from updating your console to even playing online nearly impossible for players around the world.
All these things (the necessity of console updating, the large download size of updates for both consoles and games, the Christmas Day server overloads, coupled with the possibility of another DDoS attack on the game networks) paint a pretty clear picture. If you want your kids to be able to sit down and spend a lazy Christmas Day afternoon playing video games then you’re going to need to update the game console ahead of time with any updates, download any games (and/or the game updates), and have the console ready to rock the minute it comes out…
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