I Still Can't Believe Shigeru Miyamoto's Most Famous Quote Belongs To Someone Else Entirely

Nintendo boss Shigeru Miyamoto is often quoted as having said some variation of, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad” – but as it turns out, those words may have never actually left his mouth. The phrase really is the perfect adage for our modern times: the most recent Cyberpunk update was pushed back at the last minute, several major Ubisoft releases were recently delayed during a company earnings call, and fans are still waiting for Hollow Knight: Silksong, which is due out in 2025 after a six-year wait – unless…

It really does seem like games are constantly getting shelved, delayed, canceled, et cetera – chalk it up to overlong development cycles, or too-early announcements, or unrealistic publisher expectations, or a combination of the three, but it’s happening everywhere. This quote, often attributed to Miyamoto, is generally used to assuage player concerns when a game’s release is pushed back, reminding them that a delay isn’t always indicative of trouble in paradise. Recent developments point to the fact that Miyamoto may never have said anything of the sort – but if not him, who said it?

Shigeru Miyamoto’s Most Famous Quote

Where It Comes From & How It Got Attributed To Miyamoto

Endless variations of “a delayed game is eventually good…” have cropped up over the years, almost always preceded or followed by Miyamoto’s name. It’s effectively a guarantee: whenever a game is delayed, there’s someone, somewhere, invoking these words. In an interview on the occasion of Half-Life‘s 25th anniversary, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell even made up his own version: “Late is just for a little while, suck is forever.“

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But, as A Critical Hit! points out, there’s no real evidence that Miyamoto ever said this. It’s first attributed to him in a 2003 post on Usenet (now Google Groups), where user Charles E. Hardwige phrased it, “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.” An even earlier Usenet post by portia_EH attributes it to a motto used at Blizzard while Starcraft was in development: “A late game is late until the day it ships, a bad game is bad forever!“

In popular culture, the quote goes back as far as 1997, when it was used in the print magazine Gamefan (via Ethan Johnson on X, formerly Twitter). It’s listed there as an “industry catchphrase.” But in truth, the quote goes back even further.

Miyamoto’s Famous Words Belong To Another Developer

Siobhan Beeman Coined The Phrase

The true source of the “delayed game” quote is Siobhan Beeman, an industry vet and former project director at Origin with credits on Wing Commander, Ultima 6, and The Lamplighters League. It was first documented by her partner, Ellen Guon Beeman, also a developer on the Wing Commander series and a fantasy/sci-fi author.

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Speaking at the Computer Games Developers’ Conference of 1996, Ellen quoted Siobhan as saying, “A game is only late until it ships, but it’s bad forever.” Siobhan later confirmed to A Critical Hit! that, “to the best of my recollection I came up with that phrasing,” although she acknowledges that the sentiment already existed in the industry long before she voiced it.

Ultimately, this quote was attributed to Miyamoto through a series of mistakes – a misquote, then a misattribution, then another, and another, all the way down, until it became known as his most famous quote. While it certainly seems like something that could’ve come out of Nintendo, credit is truly due to Siobhan Beeman for inventing one of the gaming industry’s most widely quoted phrases.

Sources: A Critical Hit!, Charles E. Hardwige/Usenet, portia_EH/Usenet, Ethan Johnson/X, silverinferno3/Reddit

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