Sony: Driveclub PS Plus Edition still “being looked at”

Speaking with Metro, PlayStation Europe head Jim Ryan said that Driveclub’s free PS Plus Edition was still in development.

When pushed on the release and asked if he could “guarantee that it will ever happen” Ryan said he was unable to confirm anything. Driveclub was originally slated to launch alongside the PlayStation 4, but was pushed back almost a year and released in October 2014. Suffering crippling server issues the launch of the game was a disaster and as such the PS Plus Edition was delayed.

Developer Evolution has maintained that the free edition of the game is still being worked on, but has been pushed back while it works on server upgrades and patches to try and stabilise the experience.

When asked about what seems to be becoming the industry standard, of releasing broken games and patching after release, Ryan said, “I think one thing that the industry appears to have misjudged in the generational transition is I think the massively enhanced online ambitions a lot of developers appear to have been way more technically challenging than anyone realised.

“QAing this stuff… a lot of it is load placed on servers, simply due to concurrency. It’s hard. In any form of entertainment, in any business… whether it’s a washing machine, whether it’s a book, whether it’s television, whether it’s a video game you shouldn’t put something out until it’s ready.”

Ryan added that Sony had “learnt an awful lot from the Driveclub experience” and that he hoped the mistakes made with Driveclub would not be repeated.

Driveclub is available for PS4.