Ever since the launch of PS4 and Xbox One, day-one patches have become more common. And Deus Ex: Mankind Divided director, Jean-François Dugas, thinks that it’s now normal to have them.
There’s no debate that some of the games that have recently released have been nothing short of amazing, but it seems like every other game releases “unfinished,” requiring a day-one patch. However, Dugas explains that they have become “part of our reality”.
Look at the Deus Ex franchise, or the Elder Scrolls franchise, or the Fallout franchise, or any franchise that has a lot of complex systems and it’s hard to ship those games without having any sort of patch to come with it because there are so many possibilities that can happen.
You can test, and test, and test but there are always new ways and possibilities to test something that nobody tested it before, or a bug is found when you’re in the ‘gold’ stage and sometimes it’s too late, we have the fix for the players but we cannot include it on the disc, and so sometimes it becomes this Day One patch that is not necessarily needed for the player to enjoy the game, but it is recommended to have the best possible experience.
So do I like it? No. But is it part of our reality? Yes. And it’s better that than not doing anything at all and feeling like the product is not up to par, and also there are some economic sides to all of these things, so therefore it is out of my hands and it goes beyond the developers, but I think these patches are becoming more standard nowadays.
Square Enix has already given Eidos Montreal six months of extra time to hit their expected goals with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and, more recently, gave XPEC Entertainment and HexaDrive even more time to polish Final Fantasy XV. Dugas makes some good points on day-one patches that are hard to argue against.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided releases on August 23 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
[Source: Fansided]
