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You know THAT one Miyamoto quote people keep using? It sounds like Miyamoto never actually said it

Last posted Nov 23, 2023 at 05:40PM EST. Added Nov 22, 2023 at 02:35PM EST
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It sounds like the one famous quote often attributed to Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto was likely never said by the guy at all, and rather what happened was a classic game of "telephone." The actual origins of the quote appear to be from a developer from Origin Systems, the studio behind the original System Shock. The dev in question is Siobhan Beeman and she said it back in 1996 during a panel at the Game Developer's Conference, with the REAL quote being "A game is only late until it ships, but it's bad forever."

The quote being misattributed to Miyamoto began in the early 00s when someone on a Usenet forum discussing a delay for the game Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death posted the quote most everyone knows, but going back even further in time on Usenet it sounds like what might have caused it to be attributed to Nintendo is a discussion in 1998 when Ocarina of Time was nearing release and someone said "I believe Nintendo or Rare's in house motto is 'A game is only late until it's released… a bad game is bad forever.' "

I think the quote itself is starting to show its age and, now that its origin may have been completely misattributed, only sounds more hollow. This isn't in the 90's, digital distribution and post-launch updates/fixes have become the norm for like a decade now. I'm not defending the standard practice of the industry shipping broken games, fuck them & fuck that, but we've see more than enough redemption stories concerning games that fumbled on launch. There's the oh so famous No Man Sky, but you have FFIX and now Cyberpunk that have becoming critical darlings despite their rocky starts. Even on smaller scale, there is Warhammer Darktide for example, which died overnight shortly after release, but currently enjoys a healthy playerbase in the 10k after much polish and post-fixes/tuning.

Likewise, we have seen the inverse, repeatedly delayed games which released and were god awful. I'm not holding my breath for Skull & Bones or The Suicide Squad.

Not too surprised. In hindsight I'm honestly not sure that sounds like something he'd actually say, kinda like that other made up quote of him saying "Donkey Kong Country is proof that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good" (which is obviously way more extreme but you get the idea).

Skeletor-sm

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