Not a physicist, but writing one good paper every four years sounds like a very good thing. Would you rather read 40 papers, each of which is a lowest-publishable-unit, or 10 which noticeably move science ahead?
Because of his fame, Higgs had the luxury few do--- he could contemplate quietly, and people wouldn't dare say he was doing nothing. If you do that as a mere tenure-track professor, I'd figure the university would think you're too high risk and sack you.
That would depend on whether the atom of scientific knowledge in one of those many published papers was what was needed to progress another's/one's own work or not.
I'm not suggesting quantity and regularity are better - I don't think you can force scientific progress to adopt a given release schedule - but neither am I happy to say that publicly funded results should be sat on pending a larger breakthrough.
Because of his fame, Higgs had the luxury few do--- he could contemplate quietly, and people wouldn't dare say he was doing nothing. If you do that as a mere tenure-track professor, I'd figure the university would think you're too high risk and sack you.