One game that was suppose to be PlayStation 4’s killer app, failed to impress the masses when it came out. The title in question is DriveClub. Of course, racing genre is tough and not many are able to leave their mark here.
However, expectations were high from DriveClub and to live up to them, developers delayed the title for a long time. It finally came out last year but sadly, suffered from severe server side issues. This also caused the PS Plus version to be pushed back further, which made things worse.
So what happened? In short, the overwhelming success of PS4 is partly to blame. According to President of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida:
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.
Shu believes that Evolution Studios handled the project really well, considering the burdensome task they had in front of them. Life wasn’t easy for DriveClub from the get go, but Shu claims that it has sustained momentum.
While DriveClub may have failed to become a killer app, Gran Turismo already is. It established itself in a market where many tried and failed. The long running PlayStation exclusive is yet to see an installment on PS4, but whenever it does, Shu wants it to be a VR game.
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.
