Nintendo has tweeted that a 1 GB patch is now available for Pokemon Scarlet & Violet.
Nintendo shared this message on Twitter:
“A software update for #PokemonScarletViolet (Ver. 1.1.0) will be released on 12/1. Please visit our website for more information.
We take the feedback from players seriously, and will continue to work on improvements to the games.”
In their update notes, Nintendo also shared this message:
“We are aware that players may encounter issues that affect the games’ performance. Our goal is always to give players a positive experience with our games, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We take the feedback from players seriously and are working on improvements to the games.”
Pokemon Scarlet & Violet has officially taken over the sales charts as the best-selling Nintendo game at launch, with sales of 10 million units in only a span of 3 days worldwide, as well as the biggest launch of any video game from any company in Japan. A little over 4 million of those 10 million units sold were from that region.
Unfortunately, Pokemon Scarlet & Violet also launched with many issues, that were so extensive that it led fans to wonder if Pokemon Company had exploited or overworked the developers who worked on it in some way.
Since day one, players had been complaining about performance drops, jagged textures, pop in, and other issues fundamental to game performance. These issues genuinely shocked many fans, because they were so uncharacteristic of Nintendo, much less The Pokemon Company or Game Freak.
In particular, it was well known that Nintendo took their time making their games to ensure that these sort of issues didn’t come up on their games. It’s also a general design philosophy that Nintendo hardware, such as the Nintendo Switch, is deliberately less powerful than other platforms that it competes with in the market.
Part of this is inspiration from former Nintendo developer Gunpei Yokoi, a design philosophy that emphasizes they get creative instead of relying on technology to impress. It is also generally expected that working on weaker hardware means that they will be better able to work with the development challenges that come with it.
In 2022, it may simply be the case that Nintendo and/or Game Freak could not avoid this situation. The pandemic has made the business side of video game development difficult. It’s likely Nintendo knew the game was broken, but could not afford a delay given the amount of money on the line.In which case, they were simply resolved to making fixes. You will note none of Nintendo’s messages came with excuses or explanations of what happened to the game.
While it’s easy to criticize Nintendo this should give us pause. That the company famous for delaying games to make them perfect could not delay this game, and similarly, that Warner Bros Games may have been forced to ship Gotham Knights in its current state, may be a sign that the industry is having trouble coping with the pandemic. If Nintendo can’t avoid it, future AAAs at even greater scale, and with even larger budgets on the line, may also come with these problems.