The current generation of consoles have been marred by broken promises and game launches. Last year’s Assassin’s Creed Unity and DriveClub were prime examples of this. Although both games managed to become better experiences sometime after launch, there is no denying that both of them were broken the day they were released.
So how is Naughty Dog handling this in case of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End? Gameinformer raised this question to Naughty Dog’s Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra. The good news is that they won’t ship the product if it’s not ready.
Balestra explains it’s not correct to make their staff work for post launch patch, instead they would ship a product that does not require a patch. “It is really hard because people are giving so much and they know when we are going to be done. If you tell them to keep going after that, they’ll be like, “Really? I told my wife we were done. I haven’t been home for a while.” I think emotionally it is tough. They finished their work. It would be really hard to keep going after that. We’d rather ship a polished game that is just done and doesn’t require a patch,” he said.
“Patches are only for major issues. We’re not going to start patching the little things like that,” Wells added
Balestra then followed with a question that every major developer should ask themselves. “Is it a good experience when people get their disc and have to wait for a patch to download? Like 20 gigs or something like that? That would suck. That’s not the best experience.”
Kudos to Naughty Dog for having this commitment towards shipping a complete product at launch. No wonder that each of their recent releases have been nothing short of spectacular. I wish that more developers take note of this.
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s comes out exclusively on the PlayStation 4 sometime this year.