While speaking at a panel at GDC, David Jaffe talked about his affinity for handhelds on the can, but he also brought up the point that games receive too many updates — including week one patches. He said that games should only receive 3-4 updates a year.
Jaffe brought up games of the past, including his own game, Mickey Mania, and said, “in those days, developers only had one chance to get it right, games shipped finished.” He then went on to say that, while it’s great we can now fix games after they are already out, we shouldn’t have to be fixing them the first week they are on shelves.
He speaks the truth. Games often ship with flaws that are simply patched within the first weeks of release. Even the recently released Killzone 3 had a day one update to fix its issues. While we probably won’t see an end to this practice anytime soon, hopefully Jaffe’s words will inspire future developers to release more ‘finished’ products. However, it’s important to note that fixes for existing problems is never a bad thing.
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