In the least surprising news of the day, Sony have announced that the PlayStation Plus version of Driveclub has been postponed “until further notice.”
However it’s not a developer at Evolution announcing the news, nor even the head of the studio, they have wheeled out the big guns in the shape of Shuhei Yoshida, President of World Wide Studios, who has posted the following message.
Hi everyone,
I wanted to provide you with the latest update on DRIVECLUB. Unfortunately, the road to launch has been a little rocky, and we are truly sorry that so many of you have not been able to enjoy everything that we had hoped DRIVECLUB would deliver.
We have been listening to your feedback and realize that patience understandably is running out. Evo is working around the clock to close the gap, and we have deployed additional engineering resources to help resolve the remaining issues as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the time frames required to roll out the fully connected experience will be longer than anticipated and we do not have an exact time frame for when they will be resolved. We will continue to update you on progress and you can find the latest info on the DRIVECLUB Facebook page.
We are also very conscious that we have disappointed so many of you who were looking forward to playing the promised PS Plus Edition. Our first priority is to provide you with the best possible experience while playing DRIVECLUB. With the high volume of new players and additional server load the PS Plus Edition is anticipated to bring, we are currently not confident that we can guarantee the best online experience. Until we can ensure that everyone can enjoy the full social connected online experience, we will be postponing the release of the PS Plus Edition until further notice.
On behalf of WWS we are enormously grateful for your patience and we thank you for the continued support and encouragement. Again, we sincerely apologize for the delay. We are committed to giving you the best racing experience on PS4 – it’s taking a little longer than we hoped.
Thanks,
Shu
Source: Facebook
Forrest_01
Oh dear.
Whilst I appreciate the feedback & heads up (better to know than not), I don’t think everyone is going to take this the same way!
I can see a lot of ‘FFS’s & ‘WTF’s in response to this.
ico
FFS. WTF?!
Only joking. Am a little miffed tho but better to have a stable sound game (trial / demo) at some possible date in the future than something that’s a pile of pap at the outset.
englishgolfer
A little rocky?
Forrest_01
Mini Sly Stallone.
Smallville2106
Literally laughed out loud when I read this :)
ron_mcphatty
Bloody brilliant :)
Starman
If it’s a little Rocky then I’d consider this Mickey throwing the towel in!
homerjnick
Was this not supposed to be our free game for PS+ though? Are we now not getting a replacement then?
PoisonedAce
If I remember correctly, Driveclub was a ‘bonus’ game on top of the 6 we already got. So we haven’t lost anything.
Forrest_01
I thought it was a special offer thing to coincide with the release. Of course that didn’t go too well, did it?
We got Dust an Elysian Tail & Spelunky as the games for PS4 this month. This was going to be an extra thing.
MrYd
Yes, it was a bonus demo on top of the other games we already got. I guess it won’t be a bonus demo on top of whatever PS+ games we get next week (if they can ever be bothered announcing them).
gernboes
They have been announced, its TSA who couldnt been bothered to report, it seems…
They are binding of isaac, steam world dig, frozen synapse prime, the hungry horde, and ibguess something i cant remember…
yarg2k7
I think these may be Novembers releases looking at other sites
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (PS4)
SteamWorld Dig (PS4; cross-buy with PS Vita)
Frozen Synapse Prime (PS3)
Luftrausers (PS3; cross-buy with PS Vita)
The Hungry Horde (PS Vita)
Escape Plan (PS Vita; cross-buy with PS4)
gernboes
Ehm… Yes, that’s what i wanted to say… He asked about next week’s plus games. Next week is November, if im not wrong, am i?
MrYd
That’s not been officially announced though, has it? And different to other rumoured PS+ games.
Apart from The Binding of Isaac. That was confirmed.
Avenger
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/10/29/playstation-plus-november-content-revealed
Well there was this. Have no idea where it came from, but in IGN tradition it came anyway.
Peter Chapman
those are US listings, we were expecting UK content to be announced soon so held off reporting the US stuff.
gernboes
Let me quote that:
“Sony has revealed the content set to arrive as part of November’s PS Plus subscriber rewards for both Europe and North America.”
MrYd
And yet Sony haven’t announced anything yet. IGN (and others) seem to be reporting some rumoured list of games for November.
It could be correct, or it could be wrong. Until Sony remember to announce them, nobody really knows.
gernboes
Well IGN say “Sony has revealed”, so it seems they have that information from Sony.
Of course they could be lying, or it could be a mistake, but i tend to believe them…
Avenger
Maybe Peter was psychologically conditioned not to press any link to IGN.
The problem with the IGN article is it doesn’t have any source listed (unlike TSA). I tried looking at the US blog, but couldn’t find any info. I do wonder whether they’re now abandoning the official announcements, at least in Europe. They failed to deliver Driveclub PS+, failed to abide by the ‘last Wednesday of each month’ announcement, and failed to keep up the quality which got a lot of people’s attention in previous two years. Not that I’m moaning (just stating the facts), but it’s hardly positive stuff for the PS blog.
Tuffcub
Gernboes, the announcement was made by Sony US, Sony EU have different PS+ and announce is themselves. Quite why IGN have said it’s for both companies is odd, PlayStation US *NEVER* announce things for the EU.
xIONx
The fact that it was offered as a bonus game ahead of release stinks of a rat. It makes it sound like they thought “yeah it’s broken and faulty, if we call it a bonus they can’t hold us accountable”.
I bought it like a numpty. :(
Seen an update last night and thought, maybe – MAYBE – they’ve fixed it. Nope. Last night was the worst since they got online functioning…
Flabbergastifications.
Smallville2106
They should not have released this when they did. They should have postponed it.
There is no way on earth that something this drastic happens when they thought it was ok to release. They have told us that it’s this and it’s that. It obviously is something pretty big.
If they knew it wasn’t right but released it anyway, people need sacking and if they really didn’t know then people need sacking for that too.
The whole releasing unfinished and broken games needs clamping down on.
MrYd
How much are you willing to pay for that then? However much testing you do, there’s no way to guarantee that something won’t go wrong when you launch it.
Yes, it’s annoying when it happens. But there really isn’t any way to reduce the risk to zero. Some of the overreacting to it has almost been up to the level of those gamergate wankers.
They appear to be doing the right thing. Apologise for the unforseen problems, get on with fixing them (and it’s improved a great deal) and immediately postpone the demo which would have only added to the problems.
Forrest_01
Whilst I do agree with you, I feel it probably would have helped if they took the approach that Destiny did in terms of load on the servers – Bungie arranged a time during the Beta when they would get as many people on at one time to see how it handled. That will never be truly accurate of course, but it’s certainly a good start & if there were any problems with that sort of thing, they would likely be identified there.
Destiny has obviously had its share of other controversies of course (amount of content included, price of DLC, poor story etc), but that was one bit that I do have to praise Bungie for. Aside from a couple of little niggles, Destiny has been pretty solid in terms of performance (for me at least).
I do still get a bit of Beaver from time to time though.
MrYd
I’ve never had any Beaver while playing Destiny. Although there was one evening when it was covered in Bees.
phantom5813
While I do agree that quality measures need improvement and totally understand the frustration, I dont agree or see the logic on the whole sacking thing. If they do sack the people who should have forseen this (which isnt as easy as you may think), those are the people working to fix the problems. So once they are gone, the dev will be short staffed and who will fix the game then?
MrYd
Someone agreeing these things aren’t as easy as people seem to think.
The problem is, no matter how much testing you do, with however many beta testers and endless attempts to break things in interesting ways, you’ve got to let the rest of the world in at some point.
At which point you discover the rest of the world are a bunch of idiots and they’ll do amazingly stupid things you never thought of. With weird combinations of hardware, software, networks, and they’re all just a little bit “special”. Some or all of that may apply in this case. But the general rule seems to be you make things indestructible and foolproof, only to find the fools are a lot more inventive than you, are generally weird, and have plenty of friends.
And then it gets to a point where you just have to let them loose on it and sort the mess out later. And hope it’s not too big a mess. Or never release it. Which would be like not leaving the house because you’ve put shoes on and a nice warm coat, but you could still have a meteorite land on you. To which the only sensible solution is to just wear the biggest hat you can find and hope for the best.
camdaz
It’ll be worth the wait!
xIONx
I hate to crush your optimism, usually that’s Amphlett ‘s job BUT..
It so isn’t going to be worth the wait. I’m already a level 30 and so far it has been the game I turn to when I have 5 minutes in between interesting stuff. Maybe the botched release has given me brown-tinted glasses but so far it’s just not gripped me on the apex so to speak.
Mick939
I dont begrudge them polishing especially when it seems evident they are. Im more mad at arkham origins ‘fuck you’ kind of attitude
rob_b
I can’t agree MrYd, consoles are the perfect testing ground because people CANT do all those things you mention like do unforeseen things or have multiple hardware configurations.
There is leeway to be given for the reason that you can’t expect to pre empt demand etc but this goes waaaaay beyond a small hiccup.
No matter how it’s wrapped up the launch of this game was a real cluster over a year late and still not working is just pathetic, I’m sure many people are getting a damn good shouting at for this and I guess at least they came out and admitted it but it should never have happened in the first place, it’s not like this is their first game.
TSBonyman
Disappointing for everyone waiting on the plus version but at least when they do get to play it the connectivity issues should be all sorted so they will be able to enjoy the full Driveclub experience right from the off.
Starman
If the servers can’t cope as it is then they should withdraw the game from sale until it can. What a farce.
DeadlyChipmunk
All I want is a simeple, straight forward racer along the lines of Shift 1, GT2 or Grid 1 is that too much to ask for?!? In fact I’m half tempted to get me some retro gaming action this weekend :)