Part of the current video game landscape is the ubiquitous day-one patch required for nearly every game that comes to market. Regardless of whether they actually have some kind of online connectivity, developers and publishers are increasingly pushing patches to fix eleventh hour problems as soon as consumers press start. The Wii U is no exception. As frustrating as it is, this won’t be changing at any point soon as the current day-one patch won’t be built into the system’s firmware until at least next year.
Gamers have come to accept the constant patching for actual video games, but patches for systems tend to fare less well. The PlayStation 3’s updates are notorious for infuriating folks, thanks in part to their regularity. The few patches that the Xbox 360 actually pushes through tend to revamp the dashboard, and people fear change.
It’s pretty clear that having a day-one patch throughout the holiday season isn’t a stellar move on Nintendo’s part, but they likely can’t do anything about it. It’s apparently not quite as simple as providing new firmware to their manufacturers. Even if they’re already in production, it’ll be some time yet before the updated versions can hit store shelves.
- Gut Check: Wii U
- Gut Check: Nintendo Land
- What if Nintendo released a system and not even they cared?
