bananafactory
Banned
Message from Shuhei Yoshida - President of World Wide Studios
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
From the Driveclub Facebook page.
I am still a supporter of Evo and think the game is great, but many this launch really is going to kill the game's community. Looks like we could still be weeks or months away from it actually working, if it ever does. Very disappointing.
Also - sucks for everyone waiting on the PS+ edition. I don't think we'll be seeing it any time soon based on the wording in that message.
EDIT: Updating the OP with some information as a lot of people don't really seem to understand the situation.
Regarding the game's issues themselves:
The connectivity and server problems is not as simple as a case of not having enough servers - there is a fundamental flaw with the game design and how it interfaces with their network. This has nothing to do with PSN servers or Sony's larger infrastructure - it's limited to Evo's doors. There was also a public beta done a month or two prior to release that exhibited no signs of these problems.
Regarding first party studios like Evolution:
Sony's WWS are not all working under the same roof with every Sony asset available to them at any point.
They are still largely independent teams working all over the world in different offices. Sony signs their checks and assigns people to keep in touch with them, give them what they need/ask for, and make sure things are on schedule.
I don't really see how people can fault Sony as a whole for this problem - they can't possibly have their own independent team review every line of code in every game that the WWS put out. At some point you have trust that your teams are competent enough to ship a functional product, and it's obviously that Evolution made some mistakes here.
But your PS+ subscription and paid online multiplayer has pretty much nothing to do with what happened with Driveclub.