Of all the games to appear at Sony’s Gamescom 2014 conference, Ninja Theory’s Hellblade was arguably the oddest. Not because of its appearance or by the very fact that it exists – forget all the jokes about the origins of its name – but because it was a PS4 exclusive. After toying around with multi-platform releases like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and DmC: Devil May Cry, neither being a hugely commercial success, what prompted Ninja Theory to return to the exclusivity fold, that too with its old partner Sony?
GamingBolt spoke to Ninja Theory product development manager Dominic Matthews on the same, especially how Hellblade’s PS4 exclusivity came about. With nearly every third party title opting to go multiplatform, why be exclusive?
Matthews stated that, “What we’re saying at the moment is that the game is coming to consoles first on the PlayStation, and we’ve got a relationship with Sony there that we think allows us to do that. They’re very supporting, and we have to be careful that we don’t try to focus on too many platforms at a time, and so we’re focusing on PlayStation 4. And you know, for me there’s just something nice about the partnership between Ninja Theory and Sony, it goes back to Heavenly Sword.”
Heavenly Sword was Ninja Theory’s first major release (and no, Kung Fu Chaos on the Xbox doesn’t count), releasing on the PS3 in 2007 and produced in collaboration with Sony. So if it was going to go with an exclusivity deal, why not opt for a former partner? However, it doesn’t seem that Sony owns the rights to Hellblade like it does with Heavenly Sword, which makes us wonder whether Hellblade could arrive on other systems and when.
Matthews didn’t say much on that front, sadly. “All we’re saying is that we’re coming to consoles first on PlayStation. That’s all we’re saying.”
How about a PC release? Is there a proverbial bone there we could chew on in the mean time? “Well, at the moment our focus is just on PlayStation.”
Hellblade is currently slated to release in 2015 for the PS4. It utilizes Unreal Engine 4 and will be a digital release featuring some fairly unforgiving combat. Would you like to see it on other platforms? Let us know in the comments below.