There’s a lot of discussion happening around the value of physical video game discs thanks to Sony announcing it will be discontinuing discs for PlayStation games in 2028. They give people a tangible thing to put on their shelves, help people in places with poor internet speeds play games on day one, and are the beating heart of retro game stores and the centerpoint of community gatherings during events like midnight releases. One wrinkle in the whole discussion around their importance is that these days, more often than not, a lot of big games have a day-one patch, so the game that’s actually on the disc itself is usually not the intended experience.
In a roundtable discussion at the SKY31 Convention Seoul (thanks, Inven Global), several veteran developers like Tekken director Katuhiro Harada, Cyberpunk associate game director Pawel Sasko, and ex-Sony Interactive Entertainment President Shuhei Yoshida talked about console game development. Also on the panel was Too Kyo Games CEO Kazutaka Kodaka, best known for his work on the Danganronpa series and last year’s incredibly underrated The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. Kodaka, known for his candid, often humorous public statements, talked a bit about creating physical editions for games, including special editions with “store-exclusive” bonuses. According to him, a lot of Too Kyo’s Japanese sales come from physical copies, so that remains the company’s “heaviest focus.”
The problem with this, however, is that physical manufacturing requires you to submit a master build of the game much earlier than you would have to for a solely digital launch, as the game needs to be printed onto discs and ostensibly playable regardless of whether the owner is connected to the internet. According to Kodaka, he’s started operating under the assumption that everyone will have an internet connection.
“Honestly, we approach it with the mindset of finalizing the master via patches,” Kodaka says. “Collector’s editions in North America or Europe take an enormous amount of time to pack with figures, so the master submission deadline is absurdly early. To be frank, we sometimes submit builds where we think, ‘No one should ever play it in this state.’ We barely pass platform certification requirements and release it while believing no one plays games without an internet connection these days.”
Yoshida replied saying that “in practice, you launch while praying no one plays that build and everyone downloads the day-one patch instead.” Kodaka then joked, saying “I’m not sure if I should be making such risky confessions in a venue like this.”
It’s not terribly surprising that day-one patches have essentially become necessary to access what devs intend to be the new “master build,” as almost every video game has one at this point. That said, Kodaka’s note that being able to deploy a day-one patch helps get physical editions manufactured in a timely manner while ensuring the game is in a better state on launch day is something I hadn’t considered much before. I don’t think I’ve played any of Too Kyo’s games without a day-one patch as I have bought most of them digitally, but now I’m curious if the “barely pass platform certification requirements” line is an exaggeration or if Hundred Line would have had a lot more problems if I’d put it in my Switch 2 without connecting to the internet.
Kodaka’s next project is Danganronpa 2×2, a remake of the second murder mystery visual novel with an added, alternate “Slayhem” route that will include different victims and culprits than the original.
