News Sony explains DriveClub delay: ambitious social features blamed

The delay of DriveClub was unceremonious, to say the least. With just a month to go until the launch of the PS4 in November, Evolution Studios' DriveClub was gearing up for the launch party, with Sony promoting it as one of the front-runners of the next-gen console's launch library alongside the remaining first party launch titles Killzone: Shadow Fall. It even appeared in their "A Perfect Day" advertising campaign, highlighting the fact it will be available on launch day.

And then the bombshell: rumours started to circulate that DriveClub was to be delayed until 2014. At first we were incredulous. Delaying such a major first party title so close to launch seemed improbable. Fast forward a week later, and Sony confirmed the delay, vaguely commenting that Evolution "requires more time in order to deliver on their vision."

An interview with Sony's Shuhei Yoshida on GI Biz goes into more detail about the reasoning behind the surprise delay however, revealing that DriveClub's ambitious social features were to blame: "It's almost an amazing achievement for any studio to set a release date and achieve it, especially for the launch of a new system because the hardware and software tools are always getting updated. So you always have to work with the moving target, so to speak. That said, PS4 has been praised for the ease of development and the stability of the dev kit by everyone – not just our teams but other developers and publishers. And it's true that Evolution was also heavily in discussions about PS4 hardware features and network service features. Where the team missed the date and miscalculated the tasks was when they tried to do something they have not done before.

A launch title is especially tricky if you aim too high. When you try new things, you definitely have to prepare for multiple iterations… In order for a title to come out at launch, the ambition level has to kind of be kept in check; the team has to rely on tried and true mechanisms. That I think is the main reason for missing the launch date. Drive Club is exciting because it really goes aggressive into the integration of social features and the second-screen experience, and that's a new addition for Evolution. The team has been making racing games for a long time, so they're veterans when it comes to core racing…"

"They always planned the game to have these social features but because these features are new, they found some technical matters or flaws in play testing, and that's the reason we waited until the very end to announce the delay. They might have been able to hit the date, but in terms of both getting technical matters down and getting the game polished enough… we decided we wanted the team to go back to some of the features and spend some more time to get it done."

Mercifully, another interview with Sony on Polygon has hinted that the wait might not be too arduous. According to Scott Rohde, software product development head at Sony Worldwide Studios America, DriveClub could be pulling up just a couple of months after launch: ""People know that there are games coming. I love the fact that you’ve got a couple big first-party retail games at launch, all the third-party and indie games,DriveClub coming a couple months later and Infamous: Second Son right around the corner. There’ll be something to talk about in the months to come, as opposed to cramming everything into the first month, and then not having anything to talk about for three or four months. I like the way this worked out quite better, frankly." It's a possible fraudulent slip on Scott's part, but this means we could be playing DriveClub as early as January 2014.

Meanwhile, EA Ghost have unsurprisingly taken full advantage of DriveClub's delay. According to an interview with Executive Producer Marcus Nilsson over on Polygon, the knowledge that the PS4 will now be launching without a racing game spurred the developers on to push the development of the game forward to have it ready for release alongside the launch of the PS4:  "It's in response to being there and we saw possibility, obviously," he told them. "The game feels good. We set the manufacturing dates in getting it done, and we saw that we could get it done in time [for launch.] And then we managed to do so."

Marcus also discusses other competitors in the racing genre, explaining that they cannot be compared to Need for Speed whilst praising their innovation: "I think it's so great that there are other games coming," he told them. "The more games we get into this genre of action racing, the better. Because then we're going to need to innovate. You've got [Ubisoft's] The Crew as well, and we're all going to be pushing innovation forward."

"We're certainly doing our part in that deal of trying to get a new experience onto the consoles for the next generation," he added. "It's just a new way of playing and I think that's what you really need from games when we have a transition."

Evolution are currently tinkering under the bonnet to optimise DriveClub until its ready for for release next year. You can learn more about its development in our exclusive 2 part interview. Part one discusses DriveClub's innovative community features and how they have been implemented into the game modes, whereas part two provides a technical insight into the painstaking development of creating cutting edge graphics and audio that utilise the power of the PS4.

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