Yes there is. Lazy developers.
...
Edit: Also reading the change list, 95% of that stuff sounds like new functionality which would be in an executable patch. They probably needed a few assets for GUI elements for the new modes, and some files for the colour swaps - but I can't see anything in that list which justifies a 500mb patch.
First, I know GAF loves to tell developers how lazy they are, but you could not be more wrong, at least in this case.
The reason MS has the 4 MB patch limit is because of consoles with HDDs. Non-HDD-equipped consoles have 32 megs of flash memory to hold game updates, so any updates larger than that requires a HDD. This and "user experience" are the primary reasons MS enforces this size limit.
And the reason the patch is so large is because we had to completely reorganize the game's file system, which was in the notes.
The game's load times on 360 were highly variable on 360, something that didn't show up in the testing environment, where all the systems are identical and on clean HDDs. Basically, different models of systems, HDDs and the state of HDDs resulted in load times ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes.
We determined that the variable aspect was the time it was taking to open files, of which we were opening thousands in each load. So to reduce the number of file open calls, we had to repackage almost all of the gameplay data into WAD files. This is why you're having to download a large chunk of the game again. This is also why handling the update as "free DLC" wasn't possible - the new file system required a new executable, and the new executable required the new data.
Also, we completely refactored Ms. Fortune. She was previously was twice the size of the other characters because she basically had to have head/no-head versions of every animation frame. Mike wrote some tech that basically deltas her for the headed frames, bringing her in line with the other characters. So even if we didn't have to do the other stuff, that would be about 90 megs of data right there.
The Ms. Fortune fix was extremely important to the rest of the patch, too - with the memory we got back, we were able to add the used to add the move lists, add more buffer for online play and add the low-res replacement sprites for when the streaming hiccups.
I'll leave the final determination up to you guys, but I think we've gone far above the call of duty on this patch.
Sounds like a win for everyone IMO. The size of the patch gets reduced to a reasonable size and gamers still get the patch.
Oh, the patch is still
well above the 4 MB limit, and will need the waiver. But we're hopeful that the improvement in size will be enough to speed up the submission process.