Pardon the pun, but the socially connected PlayStation 4 racing game, Driveclub has had a long and bumpy road. After several delays and a rocky launch, the slimmed down PlayStation Plus version has yet to arrive and, according to the developers, there's nothing resembling an ETA on when Sony's subscribers might actually get their hands on the game.
Driveclub is, at its heart, your typical racing game. You pick a car, you pick a track, and you get to racing. From the get-go, the team at Evolution Studios have touted the game as being an evolution of the genre, but reviews have not exactly supported that claim. They've been all over the spectrum, actually, with scores ranging from 4/10 to as high as 9/10. Some of the more harsh criticism may be the result of people who feel like production promises were not fulfilled, or it could be because (as many reviewers seem to agree) Driveclub is a solid game that doesn't really do anything new or interesting to set itself apart from the pack. It sure is pretty to look at, though.
Announced alongside the PlayStation 4 a couple of years ago, Evolution Studios made Driveclub sound like it would be bringing racers in a bold new direction, overflowing with interactive and social features that would keep players connected at all times. Unfortunately, in order to do that, you need some rock solid servers. Driveclub it would seem, utterly fails in that department.
Another recent launch suffered from a similar case of promising its audience the world and failing to deliver but, say what you will about Destiny, the mostly online game launched with nary a connection issue. Evolution has not been so lucky and, as a result, the PlayStation Plus edition of the game has been delayed yet again.
Originally slated as a launch title, Evolution eventually announced that Driveclub would also be a day one free title for Plus subscribers. That promise later got altered, evolving into a special version of the game that boasts something like five courses and 10 cars, or about a fifth of the full game's content. Then the game got pushed back to early 2014. Then it got pushed back to fall. Then it finally released this Tuesday, Oct. 7, minus the PlayStation Plus edition.
Evolution took its time getting the word out on why the gratis version of the game was nowhere to be seen, finally getting an announcement out via Facebook yesterday morning. In short, Driveclub proper has been having some widespread connectivity issues and, in order to help the developer figure out that whole server load problem, they're postponing the Plus edition for the time being.
Honestly, this all seems a bit questionable to me. Driveclub and its Plus version were supposed to launch at the same time but, once the store went live, only the paid version of the game was available. How did they know they were going to have server issues and, thus, know that holding back the Plus version would make matters easier to handle before the game even launched? I'm sure that keeping the game in development for an additional year cost a nice chunk of change and, yeah, bringing out a free version of it would almost certainly cut into sales. I hope that wasn't part of the decision making process here, but it all seems a little too convenient to be coincidence.
Either way, Evolution says that the Plus version of Driveclub is still screaming down the track, but it won't arrive until they've figured out how to make their servers behave for the game proper. So sit tight, I suppose.
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