Miyamoto's "delayed game" quote appears to be misattributed

Nintendo fans have been saying it for years. Miyamoto, in his infinite game wisdom, once said that “a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” Or, at least that was the story for decades now. Unfortunately, it now appears that Miyamoto may have never even uttered the brilliant line.

A Critical Hit has done some very extensive legwork on this famous Miyamoto quote to track down the where and when, and they’ve unfortunately come up absolutely dry. It seems the earliest attribution of this quote to Miyamoto comes from, of all places, a random 1998 Usenet poster with absolutely nothing to back it up.

The Critical Hit piece doesn’t stop there though, as it continues down the rabbit hole to see where the comment’s origins actually stem from. After a ton of virtual legwork, it appears the quote actually came from Siobhan Beeman, the project director at Origin from 1989 to 1992. The source for this was discovered in a GDC panel from 1996 and was confirmed by Beeman directly, finally putting an end to this twisted tale of misattribution.

As a last note, it appears Beeman may be quoting the studio motto for Origin back in the day, which was roughly, “A game’s only late until it ships, but it sucks forever.”