We’ve waited nearly a year for Driveclub, Sony’s long-delayed racing title for PlayStation 4, but it was actually “finished” last November.
Simon Barlow, design director at developer Evolution Studios, said that Driveclub could have launched alongside the PlayStation 4 last year. “The game was finished,” he told Develop. “What we had was perfectly shippable. It would’ve reviewed reasonably well, and it would’ve sold well, but the ambition of the vision initially wasn’t being done justice.”
Delaying Driveclub from its original launch window not only left the PlayStation 4 with a car-shaped gap in its software library but also pushed the game into a crowded driving market this fall.
Barlow said the delay was entirely down to “design reasons,” explaining that because there’s so much going on in Driveclub, Evolution has had to be really careful not to overwhelm players with content. “Trying to manage all of that logistically is challenging, so we had to be really careful with the user interface,” he said.
He also reiterated that Driveclub still won’t be fully finished when it releases next week as Evolution Studios will respond to feedback from gamers.
“We had a vision for the game, and we have a vision for how we want to extend that,” he said. “But we’ve left gaps in the schedule next year because we want to work with the community on this. We want to leave enough space to respond to feedback from the community and to try and deliver features or even remove features that aren’t quite working.”