PlayStation head honcho, Shuhei Yoshida, spoke to Eurogamer recently and explained that one of the reasons the PlayStation Plus version of Driveclub was delayed was the success of the PlayStation 4.
“We weren’t expecting this many people would buy a PlayStation 4, and have PlayStation Plus membership,” Yoshida said.
“Because [DriveClub] was originally titled for the launch of the system, the number of potential people to download for free for the PS Plus version would be much smaller than two years after the launch. We realised the daunting task of supporting potentially millions and millions of people to download and play. The team needed to go back to the drawing board and re-engineer the server-side.”
When Driveclub launched it was plagued with issues, including problems with it’s servers, and there were months of patches before the game became fully functional. The PS+ version of the game leaves the game collection on October 6th so grab it quick before it goes.
Source: Eurogamer
tonyyeb
“We weren’t expecting this many people would buy a PlayStation 4, and have PlayStation Plus membership” – Well you made PS Plus compulsory for online play which is now the main reason most people have it I would imagine… so more fool you!
Tomhlord
Sales though….
tonyyeb
It is a lame excuse though. It was obvious to anyone that Plus was going to increase in subscriptions (>90% of PS4 users have it now was it reported?).
Tomhlord
Fair cop.
bunimomike
That’s only half fair, when you look at it. Sony were utterly bowled over by the sales figures for the PS4. Let’s be fair, most of us were. We knew it would do well but this well? Not a chance. Hell, they had hardware shortages galore. It makes sense that other aspects of the ecosystem had to catch up. However, I can’t help but think that if they’d built it better with regards to scaling, that this might not have been such a problem. Then again, I’m not a programmer so the network-side of things leaves me scratching my head sometimes.
Starman
Lame excuse. They knew well before release how many preorders they had, and couldn’t have known how many would sub to plus before release.
hornet1990
Yeah, not buying it. As you say they knew how many preorders they had, and they certainly had data for the PS3 to analyze and produce educated guesses of how many would buy subscriptions given online usage, PS+ takeup on that platform etc.
I mean really, does anyone think they just had a meeting one day and decided “lets charge for online”? As with any large business there would have been a huge amount of analysis and reports generated beforehand showing expected take up, income against costs etc. They wouldn’t have made it mandatory for online if they thought only 10% of owners would buy it.
Why is this a thing right now though? the PS+ version has been released for a couple of months, DriveClub has been out a year, so what’s the point in dragging it all up again, especially for a complete nonesense response?
hornet1990
Answering my own question (kinda), looked at the source and still don’t get the response as it really has nothing to do with the question that was asked – “What’s the future of that series, and Evolution?”. Nothing in there at all about delays, and I suspect he did it to divert attention because he doesn’t have anything to say on the actual question, which is kind of worrying.
Starman
Yeah, they’d have been better off saying nothing at all as Ronan Keating once sang.
I think Driveclub will be supported for a long while rather than doing a sequel. They said originally it would get lots added to it over time.
bunimomike
It could have easily been too late by then. Things often crop up in software design that throws an enormous spanner in the works. Worst case scenario is starting again but it does happen. :-(
Amphlett
Another awesome excuse. Anyone else recall the “You Can’t Test For 50,000 Players In A Beta” line trotted out 11 months ago by some Playstation rep? My uncle Dave could have done a better PR job, and at half the price.
Amphlett
By the way, that guy knocking on my door a couple of days ago, he was calling himself “Ronnie Pickering”. I’ve never heard of him.
Starman
“RONNIE EFFIN’ PICKERING!”
Amphlett
Aye, that’s the chap.
Tomhlord
I have no idea how to develop a server system that can handle millions of players all at once, thus this is a terrible excuse.
kickit
I’m not surprised. Does anyone remember the GT5 delays? Sony has a long history of missing dates.
ron_mcphatty
Wow, underestimating sales, that’s an unusual thing to admit! Aside from this being an odd statement should we now assume that the financial state of the PS4 project is in a good state, seeing as how they’ve sold more than they needed to?
ron_mcphatty
And that the state of the state of the financial state is also good? I think I’ve overstated the state of the stated state. State!
hornet1990
You sound like you work for the state department! ;)
Jag
I’m sure the PS4 sales did take them by surprise as it did the whole industry, hence all the cross gen games at launch.
However this does feel like an excuse covering up the fact they’re netcode wasn’t great. Now I know I have no idea how difficult it is writing server code but they are definite good examples of it in many other games.
To me it seems like it was an area they didn’t pay too much attention to until it was too late.
Still I had the game from launch and have really enjoyed my time with it. Especially after around the weather patch when servers were finally working. It’s probably my most played PS4 game so far!
I hope there’s still more significant content coming for it, like a season two of content or other expansion.
Jag
I can’t believe I used “they’re” instead of “their”, is it too late to blame predictive?