One trend that has popped up in regards to videogames, is the cries that patching SUCKS, and we need the old days where it is IMPOSSIBLE for developers to get away releasing games that need patches.  If you don't offer a way for easy patches, then the games are said to come out flawlessly, or at least better today.   Well, I do know, even back in the DOS days of the PC, there were patches for games.

Anyhow, this being said, I believe Wii Motion Plus shows why patching is good.  By the use of patching, current games out would be able to take advantage of Wii Motion Plus, and get better control.  Imagine Wii Sports with Wii Motion Plus implemented or Punchout, or any other game you want to name.  And this is why patching is a good thing.

Just my 2 cents...

And games that were rushed out the door with the intention of fixing them later, like the Wii version of Tomb Raider Underworld (which couldn't even be completed with a patch) are why patching is a bad thing.

It's a Catch-22, really. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

It's not that simple. You can't simply "patch" WM+ to an existing game.

You can however create new downloadable content that is compatible with WM+. But these have to be almost entirely new code, and therefore probably more worthwhile as new games. It's not just a layer you can add to an existing game. A lot of things have to be remade from scratch to support it. You can't re use the 3D dynamics that were in there, you can use the 3D models but even that has to be modified quite a bit.

You could have patched the original Wii Remote motion controls to certain button based games, when it comes to waggle-like games. With WM+ that's not as simple, and probably not worthwhile in the form of patching. Resource wise it lends itself better to new games designed around it.

Was a patch actually released for the Tomb Raider game on the Wii?  Or was it a save game that ended up not having the problem state in it?

Does the Wii have the ability to patch disk based games that are sold?  If not, then how does this prevent bugs from happening?

Yeah, it was actually patched, as have been a couple of VC/WiiWare games.  The problem was that there was supposed to be a lever in a later level used to open a door, but they didn't actually put said lever into the game.

It's that kind of 'I'll fix it later' mentality that makes me skeptical that patches are all that great.  If it genuinely enhances an already-great game, like slightly tweaking weapon balance or adding a nwe puzzle or two, that's great.  But currently it's being used as an excuse to toss broken games out the door.

Adding WM+ is more than a "patch", it's a fairly significant change to the game.

Like anything, patches are a double-edged sword that can be good when used wisely and very very bad when used poorly. Back in the early 90s, patching was done a lot for PC games released as shareware, largely because shareware survived not only on how fun it was, but also on how stable it was. The most famous example of intelligent patch use would have to be DooM, which went through roughly 12 revisions before they stopped updating its core with fixes and tweaks. Even with all of the patches the game received, DooM 1.0 is pretty stable and reliable (though not as capable as the 1.9 engine that they ended up with by the time the engine was retired).

The darker side of patching can be seen in games where the retail product cannot even run until it's been patched, though that's not too common. I think the most notorious example of poor patch use is a tie between Sims and Sims 2. Every single expansion pack for each of these games introduced a slew of new bugs, and you practically had to wait for 2 months for the developers to release a patch to fix these issues before you could even use them. It got so bad that EA was actually stealing user-made patches for Sims 2 expansions instead of coding the fixes themselves (without giving any credit to the actual patch creators, naturally; that pissed off a lot of the online Sims 2 community).

The best rule of thumb is this: make your product as though you can never patch it after it's on the market. Once it reaches the market, only patch when absolutely necessary, fixing as many issues at once as you can. This is how shareware developers used to do it, and this is how some companies still do it.

The problem with the suggested kind of patching comes with the game design. Basically a game that is designed to work with one kind of controls, can be patched so, that a function is mapped to be done with different controller action (for example tap a button -> swing a remote or vice versa).

Even if a game like Wii Sports would be patched to take advantage of WM+, the advantages would be very slim, since the game design would still be the same it was.