Suffering a rocky launch last year that saw severe server issues and the months-long delay of the PlayStation Plus Edition, DriveClub has “sustained its momentum,” according to Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida.
Speaking with Eurogamer, Yoshida talked a bit about what happened last October:
We weren’t expecting this many people would buy a PlayStation 4, and have PlayStation Plus membership. Because the title 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 realized 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.
Sony was originally targeting five million PS4s sold, but ended up doing seven million, “and it just kept going.”
All in all, he’s “really happy” with how developer Evolution Studios handled DriveClub as things went forward. However, the DriveClub series may end with just one game, as Shuhei admits the racing genre is in a difficult place:
The driving genre’s a very difficult market right now. The team, we need to find a great angle for the racing to continue, to come up with a new racing game, if we’re to look at another racing title. Creative ideas come when things are tough, so that lightbulb moment, I’m looking forward to.
Looking at another racing title we know is coming to PlayStation 4, Gran Turismo 7 from Polyphony Digital was confirmed a couple years ago. While we don’t know much about it, Shuhei would really like to see it support PlayStation VR:
Many trial tests we’ve been doing, some genres just work fine. One of those genres is racing games. So when Gran Turismo comes out on PS4, I’d like to see it support PlayStation VR, yeah.
While Sony is excited for PlayStation VR next year, he adds, “From a delivering games standpoint, we have work to do. People constantly ask us for the big exclusive AAA games.”
[Source: Eurogamer]
