[2021] Anyone know when update 35 is coming to console?

Hi, let me just clear something up real quick.

So, releasing a build to Steam is pretty easy. It's almost literally pressing a button. Almost.
This allows us to patch and update pretty fast, and also get feedback, like when we run the experimental the week up to the release of an update.
That's pretty darn cool because we can catch bugs and fix them pretty fast since we get some solid data and feedback from the people playing on Steam.
That kind of fast deployment is not possible on Xbox, unfortunately. There are more hoops to jump through and while there's the benefit of the hardware being pretty much aligned through all the users, there are some differences that make it non-trivial.

So, it turns out the fastest and best way to get the updates out is to complete them on Steam, get a few days of hotfixes gathered up, and put them in the Xbox version, since patching is also non-trivial, due to the rigidity of submitting to a console most of the time.

I know it sucks seeing it come out on Steam, and having to wait 1-2 weeks for the Xbox version, but holding the Steam version back would currently not make sense and would not make the Xbox version come out faster - on the contrary, since QA would be swamped testing more versions at the same time. Also, your PC friends wouldn't be waiting for you, as the Microsoft Store version is the same as the Xbox version, so there's literally no difference there - it's only the Steam version that's launched faster, and it's to everyone's benefit, if you're seeing the big picture. :)

That’s the same build as Xbox.

No worries, there's a lot in game development that are behind the scenes or obscured, so it's very easy to think that it's just poor planning or scheduling. There is a reason for it all, and we try to be as transparent as possible when the chance presents itself. Crossplay and simultaneous updates would be great, but it does also complicated matters a lot more, and being the size we are, having flexibility and some space to act is very beneficial for us. Often the content updates aren't completely feature complete until a week or two before we go into experimental, so it's a really tight schedule we adhere to without having to crunch.

Yeah, the certification process is less restrictive for a game in Game Preview or Open Beta. Once it's a full version, there has to be more testing to ensure a certain quality. They've automated most of it now, and in our case, it's more about getting some hotfixes collected and having the game in a stable state, where it makes sense to push it to console. That gives us time to test the console version, apply the first handful of hotfixes, and then release the update on console. If we had to update the console version with the same frequency, we'd probably have one or two more hotfixes ready, once the first was cleared for publishing.