We have several large applications in the Autodesk estate, that take upwards of an hour for user to save merge and close down, during the update cycle we have templates rolling out over a 14 day patch cycle, we would like to be able to make the update only deployment available from day 0 for the user to self service until their mandatory install date.
The problem with this is that available assignments do not process requirement rules until the user clicks "Install" in the Company Portal. As a result, every user you've deployed the update-only package to as Available will see the update in Company Portal, even if they don't have Autodesk installed (for example) - this requires you to then carefully target the assignment to specific users or devices.
There's value in your idea but I'm just highlighting why it's not currently possible to deploy updates as available due to this Company Portal quirk.