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[Ravidrath]

Honestly, I don't have a problem with their policy. Devs have been releasing these insanely sized patches for a long time now and they need to cut that down. If it means more manageable patch sizes, then I'm all for it.

While I don't know how Nintendo's system works, devs don't "release insanely sized patches."

The actual size of the patch isn't under devs' direct control. Devs upload the full build to MS or Sony, and their patch system generates the patch based on what changed, etc.

So the only way to possibly get devs to limit patch sizes would be to ask devs to fix fewer bugs, make fewer improvements, and generally do less work improving the game. And that still might not actually change anything, since where all the data ends up in the package isn't predictable.

 

[jonno394]

Mr. Shifty released pretty broken, too, and ran into the same patching troubles.

TBH, I wouldn't take that as another example of Nintendo putting extra stumbling blocks in the way, the devs who did the switch port and the publishers always came across as somewhat 'shifty'

 

[trixx]

Did the Wii U also have these restrictions? I don't see what the problem is assuming it can fit on the system people can free space or add an SD card.

Probably the thing holding a lot of titles back and yeah should have shipped with 64 gb at least

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Thats the problem with having 32gb of memory

 

[5taquitos]

I remember the big update for Fast RMX that added fixes and modes. Shinen posted on their Twitter that it was submitted and the update took around 3-4 weeks (I think) finally get released after that.

That's not really that crazy, all the console manufacturers have a long turnaround time for patch cert.

 

[Stallion Dan]

I'm curious as to why they didn't just delay so they can ship a finished product.

Because complaints about late ports and the excuse not to buy.

 

[heybrian]

Wii U was available with 8 or 32GB and they didn't care about patch sizes then.

Because when you're 99% of the entire library on the console the only person you have the regulate is yourself.

 

[Diablohead]

Devs aren't inflating patch sizes for shits and giggles. It's not 2006 any more.

It's bits of both, modern consoles have huge patches because there is no real limit set in place, they are making new content and piling it all in without much care, some devs are better then others.

I don't agree with how nintendo treats this issue btw.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

This is a company that just released a handheld with a 720p screen...

Probably the best decision Nintendo made regarding the Switch.

Because complaints about late ports and the excuse not to buy.

They were basically screwed either way, so I do feel some empathy for their situation.

 

[TheGamingBox]

This is a company that just released a handheld with a 720p screen...

no smart phone or tablet with a super high res screen actually plays games at a native resolution,

 

[Zombie James]

Of all the polices to have, limiting how and when developers can patch their games is one of the dumbest. There should be no barriers on developers fixing bugs and adding features.

 

[test_account]

Patches don't need to be huge. Some level of compression is needed. They even say that they could get the size down from 7gb to 3gb. That means there's an insane amount of bloat in there.

That sounds like it is the whole game, and it also says that the Switch cant run the game in that current state unless i'm misunderstanding something.

 

[ViolentP]

A lot of them are not exactly necessary, but symptoms of how the engine or resource manager for the game packs files together. The amount of unchanged shit that comes down in some of these patches just because the resources are all bundled together in a single file gets ridiculous. You might only realistically make 100MB of changes (which is excessive unless you're adding new graphical or audio content), but the user still gonna download 1GB+. Wanna change a prebaked shadow map? Redownload whole level resources!

Some games do it better than others... most don't bother to make changes that allow patches to be smaller for reasons.

There is a lot of flexibility in patch distribution to be certain. There is also a level of responsibility a developer should take when distributing said patches. So I believe there are times where large patches are justified, and it's a shame they need to be hindered due to a protection from those that abuse a lack of optimization.

 

[TS-08]

LOL. This thread is slowly becoming a general Airing of Switch Grievances.

Also, I'll point out that the OP itself indicates that they got a waiver from the size requirement, so even if the wait is annoying, Nintendo obviously will cut devs some slack in that regard.

 

[Hattori]

Because complaints about late ports and the excuse not to buy.

Is that really it? Or is it the fact that they willing shipped an unfinished product to get get as much day 1 sales as possible?

EDIT: NVM, it seems like they were mandated to release parity

 

[EDarkness]

Wii U was available with 8 or 32GB and they didn't care about patch sizes then.

I think they did. I'll have to look at the patching policy currently, but I believe there's a limit there, too. The thing is, we don't know what the limit for the NS is, so without knowing that it's hard to determine what the real problem is. If the minimum size of a patch is 4GB, then I can see why Nintendo would want to cut that down. If it's 1GB, then maybe that's not too reasonable.

 

[javac]

This is a company that just released a handheld with a 720p screen...

I'm sure a 1080p screen would have done wonders for its battery, price and performance.

 

[Shiggy]

We were put in a position where we needed to get this game out at the same time as the other consoles

Mandatory same day release or no release at all?

 

[TheMagician]

Absolutely no evidence that this is true. It's clear the dev has been stringing people along with this.

They've even offered a free game to Switch owners which I doubt they would do if Nintendo were to blame and not them.

They're safe though since they know Nintendo won't bother calling them out for it.

 

[QuixoticNeutral]

Oh boy, we're backing in the glory days of 2006 console patching!

Wonder if games will start to lose their crossplay feature if Nintendo puts limits on devs updating their games.

Cross-play is definitely where I see this causing trouble in the future, as you do need platform parity for routine balance and feature patches.

Anyway, if the roadblock is strictly a matter of process, I get the impression that there isn't a good, coordinated procedure worked out to expedite the approval of special cases. This will certainly come up again and it's best that there is some pressure on Nintendo now while the number of affected titles is relatively few.

For reference, NBA Playgrounds takes up 7.4 GB on the Switch (it's one of the largest titles on the eShop overall), and Mr. Shifty is 4.5 GB. Depending on what the developers' update structure is like, I wonder if the cap on patch size is actually relatively generous in the majority of cases.

 

[Jubenhimer]

I don't really see the point in this. Now some will say "But the Switch only has 32GB of memory" yeah, how about the fact that you can expand it via a conventional and readily available storage medium. They don't have these policies in place for the 3DS, which doesn't really even have any on board storage and is completely reliant on an SD card. If true, there's no real excuse for this, and Nintendo should loosen up their stance in this case.

 

[OfficerRaichu15]

I'm sorry Nintendo but that's fucked up. If your pushing same day release and don't let secs fix or add anything they did since they are being rushed, then you are hindering on possible great experiences.

 

[feelingkettle]

Mandatory same day release or no release at all?

Can't be...there's a bunch of games that are releasing later on Switch. Yooka Laylee for one, which was featured in a Nintendo Direct.

 

[EDarkness]

Mandatory same day release or no release at all?

As I said in the NBA Playgrounds thread, if the patch was only going to be a couple of days out for the NS, then they could have held all versions a week or so for them to get it in so all versions launched with the same content. We're not talking about months, but days. Instead they purposefully shipped an incomplete game with the hope of patching in the missing stuff later and it backfired on them. I'm sure if they had this to do over again, they would have held the game until it was in a good state compared to the others.

 

[Caronte]

Does anyone know the current Splatoon's patch size?

 

[NSESN]

This is a company that just released a handheld with a 720p screen...

Ignorant post like this is why Nintendo fans defend every dum decision. Can we have thread about Nintendo doing something wrong without this shit please?

 

[Somnid]

Doesn't seem like either party is exactly wrong here. Nintendo should obviously police sizes because it's a big issue for the platform especially for a portable that doesn't have an HDD. And the devs aren't saying they can't do it, in fact they can potentially cut the size in half but it's still developing, the tools and structures aren't mature enough yet. Yet at the same time had they shipped with the features it wouldn't have been an issue. I'm sure they'll find a solution.

 

[KHlover]

This is a company that just released a handheld with a 720p screen...

Yeah, so you can play games in native res instead of shitty upscaled 1440p or 4K. Do you think any 3D phone game actually renders at more than 720p?

 

[Adam Tyner]

That's what happens when you release a system with a 32gb hard drive in the year 2017.

The Switch technically doesn't have a hard drive. For the same reason you can't buy a 500 GB iPhone, there's only so much capacity Nintendo could include without the price being astronomical.

 

[jufonuk]

Don't release broken games.,

This. Just bring it out as polished as possible stop releasing games then patching them later

 

[specdot]

Don't release broken games.,

Grand total of 73 posts. Great contribution breh.

I'm not surprised as this is coming from Nintendo.

 

[dracula_x]

Good thing we have Nintendo to protect us from large patches.

and with policy like that, probably from 3rd party titles too

Don't release broken games.,

Say that to Konami. Also wonder, why they got free pass from Nintendo.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

This is one dev, and we don't really know the details of the situation. Not his fault that he's under NDA, of course, but the fact remains that we don't know the full story.

Until we hear more devs come out with similar stories, I wouldn't pay to much mind to this.

 

[TheMagician]

Grand total of 73 posts. Great contribution breh.

I'm not surprised as this is coming from Nintendo.

It was a better effort than yours.

 

[Chindogg]

It also means that post game support is severely limited since you can't add to games. Want to add a free map? sry patch size too big.

A map is a little different than patching in a third of the game when you're already the biggest game on the eshop.

 

[patrickthehedgehog]

This is a company that just released a handheld with a 720p screen...

The resolution is kept that way in order to have a decent battery life. I thought everyone realized this by now.

 

[Adam Tyner]

This is one dev

Two; Mr. Shifty was mentioned in the OP as well.

 

[Mr-Joker]

I am confused, I thought that patches would be saved onto the mirco SD card rather than the on-board memory.

As for the folks bemoaning Nintendo for releasing the Switch with a small memory storage, you do realise that it would bump up the Switch price?

It was either release it with a small memory space and release a patch to transfer data to the Mirco SD card later down the line or release it with a bigger memory space and bump the console price up.

 

[specdot]

It was a better effort than yours.

Oh you. Good to see there are some white knights here on NeoGaf.
Oh. Lemme guess. My Nintendo comment triggered you didn't it? lol.

 

[GameAddict411]

ID tech games will never release on the switch because of how massive some of the updates for the game. I remembering getting a 20 gb update for doom on the PS4. A similar patch for Wolfenstein. I think developers have not done their best to actually make them manageable. I have a great internet connection with no limits, but I know plenty of people with only 300 gb limit.

 

[trixx]

I don't really see the point in this. Now some will say "But the Switch only has 32GB of memory" yeah, how about the fact that you can expand it via a conventional and readily available storage medium. They don't have these policies in place for the 3DS, which doesn't really even have any on board storage and is completely reliant on an SD card. If true, there's no real excuse for this, and Nintendo should loosen up their stance in this case.

Exactly. It's a mobile device so it has 32gb on board fine, you can expand the storage with SD cards like every other mobile device so why is this a problem for Nintendo? I know folks with like 128 gb additional storage on their switch. wat

 

[QuantumBro]

Cross-play is definitely where I see this causing trouble in the future, as you do need platform parity for routine balance and feature patches.

Anyway, if the roadblock is strictly a matter of process, I get the impression that there isn't a good, coordinated procedure worked out to expedite the approval of special cases. This will certainly come up again and it's best that there is some pressure on Nintendo now while the number of affected titles is relatively few.

This is really something that Nintendo should've figured out before they released the console. Kinda shocked that their infrastructure doesn't support reducing file sizes of released games.

I think there are going to be a lot of angry Rocket League players on Switch a few months after it comes out.

 

[JustenP88]

NBA Playgrounds is taking up more space on my Switch than any other game. I have 15 games downloaded. More space than MK8D. 3 times as much as ARMS.

This situation sounds complicated, and I hope it all gets worked out... But you can't tell me that's not batshit insane.

 

[YesThatGuy]

People saying "32 GB, in 2017!!" need to check the storage on their cellphones. The Switch is first and foremost, a portable.

That comes with all kind of development implications, and limits.

 

[True Fire]

Honestly, I don't have a problem with their policy. Devs have been releasing these insanely sized patches for a long time now and they need to cut that down. If it means more manageable patch sizes, then I'm all for it.

I hope you never ever complain about third party support after this post.

 

[Lylo]

I don't want to play devil's advocate here, but i don't know the details of the approval process so i better not judge Nintendo in this specific case.

When Rocket League releases we will be able to grasp at how efficient is the update approval process because Psyonix patches Rocket League very often and at the same time in all platforms. Also, this is the only way they can garantee the crossplay functionality because everyone must me using the same version of the game. It will be interesting to see how well Nintendo will handle that.

 

[Cerium]

The last addendum in the OP says that it's presently a system limitation and not an arbitrary policy, and that Nintendo is working to change it to accommodate larger patch sizes.

If we accept all of the dev's statements at face value, the premise and framing of this thread is misleading.

 

[aBarreras]

Yeah ok.

GAF and it's tech knowledge to the rescue as usual. Fucking lazy devs.

Cry all you want, is the dev himself saying it

 

[EDarkness]

Exactly. It's a mobile device so it has 32gb on board fine, you can expand the storage with SD cards like every other mobile device so why is this a problem for Nintendo? I know folks with like 128 gb additional storage on their switch. wat

We don't know what the limit is. If the limit it 5GB and they're trying to release a patch larger than that, then I could see Nintendo limiting that. If it's 1GB, then that might be too low for the size games get these days.

I hope you never ever complain about third party support after this post.

Why? Because devs should be able to release insanely large patches for their games?

Nintendo needs to get so much flack for not supporting external HDD's on the dock.
256GB SD cards in as the current max is a joke.

I can get behind this. I have an external HDD ready to go if they allowed us to use them.

 

[Sinfamy]

Nintendo needs to get so much flack for not supporting external HDD's on the dock.
256GB SD cards in as the current max is a joke.