Almost two months after release, DriveClub is almost the game we were promised pre-launch- a wonderful, amazing next generation racer that really ups the ante on the entire social and connectivity aspect of a racing game. That said, its launch was a mess and it was a nightmare on multiple levels- vestiges of the poor launch can still be seen in the fact that the PS+ edition, promised almost two years ago, is still not out, or the fact that Evolution Studios had to give out a massive amount of DLC for free to make up for everything.
For the first time since the actual launch of the game, and since the entire debacle occurred, Sony has spoken out about the launch, admitting that it was an embarrassment to them.
“It’s a disappointment,” PlayStation UK boss Fergal Gara said about the server troubles to IGN. “When you lay your soul out as being ‘4ThePlayers’, then what you certainly don’t want is games that are not fully ready. It certainly wasn’t any ill-intention on behalf of the team. It’s ambitious as a game; they’re as embarrassed as we are and all you can do in those situations is say sorry.
“We apologise to any players affected and are doing our damndest to make things right. So that’s what we’ve been doing and the game is pretty near-complete now. We don’t want to introduce the PS Plus Edition until we’re confident the servers can take the load.
“Unleashing it on the millions of PS Plus users is the next step, but we want confidence in the capacity and concurrency figures. I’ll say again: we apologize and are trying to sort it, and we’ll hopefully learn from it so we see it less in future.”
I still take issue with the modern ‘release first, patch later’ mentality that is plaguing so many non Nintendo AAA games these days (Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Battlefield 4, Assassin’s Creed Unity were other notable offenders), but the apology feels sincere, the game has been fixed, they’ve tried to make up for the bad launch by giving away a host of free content… I guess it’s time to let it go.
I just hope that they (and other studios as well) will take the time to delay a game if it’s still unfinished, to let it cook in the oven if necessary.