Microsoft Responds to Phil Fish’s Claims About Patching Fez

Earlier in the week, Fez creator Phil Fish went on a bit of a rant about the game’s recent patch troubles, basically blaming Microsoft for the fact that there will not be a second patch. Patching games for a console is expensive – that much is true – but now Microsoft has issued a statement on the matter that opens Fish’s comments to even greater scrutiny.

Speaking  to Kotaku, Microsoft stated, “Polytron and their investor, Trapdoor, made the decision not to work on an additional title update for Fez. Microsoft Studios chose to support this decision based on the belief that Polytron/Trapdoor were in the best position to determine what the acceptable quality level is for their game. While we do not disclose the cost of Title Updates, we did offer to work with Trapdoor to make sure that wasn’t a blocking issue. We remain huge fans of Fez.”

Microsoft’s comments seem to indicate that they were eager to support Fez, and would have worked with Polytron to help mitigate the cost of another title update. So one has to wonder – did Fish refuse to work with Microsoft on this, or were Microsoft’s alternative solutions still too expensive for his taste? In any case, I’d say neither party is entirely blameless, but Fish still comes out looking like the one who is most in the wrong here.