"When a game is ready to finally go to the replicators and get printed onto millions of disks — that is when the game has gone gold. That is, we have gold master disks ready to send off to
replication. For consoles like Xbox 360 and PS3, going gold means we’ve passed
certification and Microsoft/Sony has sent the gold master disk to the replicators." -Bethesda Softworks, makers of Oblivion and
Fallout 3