Even though this topic comes up as something new, I cannot help but feel like it is something far older than what most make it out to seem. What the industry considers a "release" has changed, and that changed even outside of the land of Nintendo. Early Access is often cited as the dam breaking moment, but even in early years of the 360/PS3/Wii era, developers took a bit of guff from fans for fixing unstable netcodes or busted mechanics days, week, and even months after release. If you pushed me to pinpoint an event that started things, I'd point to when XBLA and PSN started selling stuff online that could not be purchased physically and when they open the door for online firmware updates. The reality is that even if developers and publishers don't bill a game as a "service" they still view them as living documents or ecosystems that might require further tinkering. The vast majority of this is good for consumers. Mario Maker 1 got countless updates that added new characters and editing tools that improved, not worsened, the overall game. Before the ubiquity of online connectivity, if a game had a bug or mechanical issue, you were stuck with that forever. Also, at the end of the day, the issue harkens back to the old 360/PS3 issue of on-disc DLC and I cite Jeff G's stance of "Is the game you purchased good or worth the price of entry?"

Now, with Game Pass and other streaming services and platforms, you can't even say that "soft" releases are hurting consumers. People can opt into a game when they see fit, and punch out if the first three hours don't tickle their fancy. Also, there's a continual disconnect between fans and how game development works. Sure, you might cite features in a sequel that were removed, but is that a sign of developer maleficence or neglect? Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe those features made more sense on a legacy platform, or the developer cut them to make way for new features or gameplay hooks and they were working with a deadline looming.

And finally, we still have to view many of the games coming out this year and next as being products made during a pandemic where the programmers and designers likely worked in circumstances unlike the industry trend in previous years.

Technically/literally, it depends. As someone who has played games that have had some for of troubled/flawed development and launched in a "bad" state such as No Man's Sky, Fallout 76 and Cyberpunk 2077, a dedicated development team can eventually make up for those shortcomings and get their game to, at least, close to where it intended to be, or take feedback and improve the game as time goes on.

Emotionally, it also depends, but the general consensus seems to err on the side of a game being bad forever if the initial launch doesn't deliver. Sometimes the negativity is warranted, but sometimes you don't really know unless you play the game for yourself.

A game can be patched, but in most cases it's very unlikely a publisher is willing to fund the development required post release to make a "bad" game "good", take Anthem for example which ended up abandoned. There's also the matter of who is working on it post release, i imagine the core design and development team responsible for the bulk of the game move on to the next project by the time of release, probably before, so the team remaining to fix bugs or potentially make radical improvements is a handful of people without the time or funding to make any kind of drastic change, which is why 99.9% of games stay basically the same after launch. That's why delays are so important because while it may not be the case for every game, the idea is that the core team gets to work on it for longer before it's left to the support team.

The fixes, changes and additions to No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk don't really change my opinion of those games, if i played CP on console i'd be a lot more excited about the fixes, the main game i think of is Final Fantasy 14 and there isn't really another publisher that would be willing to put that much budget into fixing a game.

A great example of a delay would be Half Life, originally due to release in 1997 they decided the game wasn't fun so they pushed it back a whole year and reworked the entire game, and what you ended up with changed the industry.

I would say no, we had plenty of games pushed out the door early and become really successful. Rainbow Six Siege probably being the best example, Fortnite became a completely different game from the one people originally bought into.

Sometimes for whatever reason is just doesn't work no amount of delays will make it good, Duke Nukem Forever spent more than 14 years in development.

Game development isn't a straight line there isn't a right or wrong way we've seen through early access releasing early can actually be a good thing. What people define as not being good enough or short on content is often very subjective.

@pauljeremiah: I would certainly disagree with people's impression regarding Sea of Thieves it has nearly 200k user reviews with a 90% positive rating on Steam while being near the top on the Xbox most played chart, its why we see it every year at the Xbox showcase even when they have nothing really to show.

I think in like a general, philosophical sense it is pertinent and useful still today, albeit maybe slightly different? It feels like now delays can still be a good thing most of the time (for the game, not the people -- we've all read too many instances where a delayed game's crunch ends up the worst crunch of all), but basically now you only have one chance at a good first impression, and launching in a busted state, unfun state, or lacking promised features, you could have a disaster on your hands that a team might never recover from. Sure, some have (No Man's Sky), but others (Cyberpunk 2077), even for all of their work to fix things, we can already see the damage done for many, and we have no idea how it will impact their next game's sales.

In short, it is a good mentality overall (sans the crunch) because it encourages not releasing unfinished, unpolished, etc... game's. That's good. The world has changed though significantly, and it is far less imperative that it be 100% at launch, because they can always tweak and tune it, unlike a broken NES game that is just basically unplayable.

I would say it is not an absolute truth, since in the age of patches and updates, a busted game can be turned around.

However, it is a good rule of thumb, since busted games rarely will get the attention needed to improve on them after release, and the bad press can linger a lot longer after the game has been deemed "fixed". Cyberpunk 2077 and Fallout 76 are good examples of games that are unlikely to ever get to an acceptable level, and even then, I will not try them, and the publishers will not spend marketing money to let me know that "now it is safe and well to get into the game... buy it now!"

I think he knows a thing or two about game development that remains true even in the modern era of day one patches, live service games and ongoing development.

It's like in photography/cinema, the old adage "we'll fix it in post!" Maybe. Probably not though. If something is busted on the first take, there's very little you can do after the fact to salvage it. And frankly, it's usually less effort and time to take the time to do it right the first time than to release it in a bad shape and then try to sand down the rough spots.

its a good quote but I believe proven that he never actually said it.

Lore bomb: The "A delayed game is eventually good. A bad game is bad forever" quote was not said by Miyamoto | Page 2 | ResetEra

I would prefer delay to get a game right, but, I have the perspective of a) developing software, so I know how hard this crap is to do and b) I don't really give a damn about FOMO, so, waiting extra time for even a highly anticipated release doesn't bother me.

I think in the modern 'games as a service' era, there's definitely a lot more wiggle room then there used to be -- but there are a lot of indie games that have a single shot to get your attention, and a lot of businesses that don't have the resources or the corporate culture to iterate on a product to fix issues. And that's assuming that finicky gaming culture will give you a second chance.

Or to meet quote (however mis-attributed) with aphorism: "You have one chance to make a first impression."

You're probably talking more about content updates than technical issues, because Nintendo games very rarely have massive bugs and performance issues, but anyway recently I have encountered a lot of AAA games that have had massive issues that were just never patched.

Take Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which I'm currently playing on Xbox. The game is 2 years old and still a mess. The frame rate hitching is probably an engine problem that can't be fixed without remaking the whole game but I am getting a horrible lip sync issue in cutscenes and based on forums I am not the only one. And I'll say again that this is on console and not PC. They also did a Series S/X update for it but for some reason load times are up to a minute even with the SSD, I'd be really curious to know why exactly but that has to be just lazy programming?

Another is Hitman 2, this time on PC. Crashes on some Nvidia systems, I'm not sure exactly what triggers it but looking at forums I am not alone and most PC gamers have Nvidia cards so it's not like I'm on some unconventional hardware that they couldn't have tested for. Never been fixed, game is just unplayable for me because it can crash as early as 5 minutes into the game, and it eventually crashes every session so it's not like some other games that crash once in 20 hours that is annoying but that you can live with. Usually on PC there is always some community hack to fix the thing developers won't, but for this issue there seems to be nothing.

Still one is Halo 4. Game's more than a decade old at this point and has been re-released on the Master Chief Collection. The level with the big tank still sometimes just fail to load the final part of the level, and since the game auto-saves your only chance is to start the level from scratch. I've read on the forums that if you do certain things in certain order it at least decreases the likelihood of that happening but it is amazing that it isn't getting fixed. This is also on Xbox.

My conclusion here is that developers typically fix what they can for the day 1 patch and maybe the few patches after it, but once they're out of the launch window they will never fix the issues that are still open at that point. Live service games of course are a separate topic.

even if its not necessarily exactly true anymore i think its a good policy to live by. just cause a game can be fixed post-launch doesn't mean it will be and just cause you can doesn't mean you don't loose goodwill by the consumers who bought it n feel burnt even if ts fixed down the line.