The recently instituted PSN pass program has resulted in many unhappy gamers, but Sony has made it clear that every future first party title will adhere to this system and Naughty Dog is here to back them up.
In an interview with TSA, director of Uncharted 3, Justin Richmond made it clear that if they were to sell the game without the online pass, they’d have to offer the game as two separate products; one being the online portion and the other being the offline campaign. As for why this would need to be done, Richmond pointed out the expenses that are tied to keeping online servers going and how used game sales don’t aid in paying for this.
We give literally thousands of hours of content in our online stuff, and on top of that we give you not just competitive, but an entire co-op experience as well.
There’s basically a whole alternate history, alternate version story in our co-op, and in this game they’re actually all tied together. All the co-op missions, of which there are even more, are all actually one continuous story, if you play them in the right order.
We’re giving out a huge amount of content, and part of the reason for the online pass is that when that stuff goes online, it isn’t free. We have to pay for servers and all this different stuff to maintain it, and so at some point games have to make money. It’s a business, and we just want to be able to continue to provide that kind of content.
If you’ve gotten a chance to jump in online and try out the multiplayer, it should come as no surprise to you that Naughty Dog has been working pretty hard to craft a compelling online experience. It’s only fair that they be compensated for such a quality product. Considering all of the other games that launch at $60, a rich, feature packed game like Uncharted 3 should feel like a bargain, whether you have to shell out a few extra bucks for the online pass or not.
