DRIVECLUB Update from Evolution Studios

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DRIVECLUB Update from Evolution Studios
Update: We know many of you were looking forward to playing the promised PS Plus Edition and we are truly sorry for the delay. Our first priority is to provide you with the best possible experience while playing DRIVECLUB. With the high volume of new players and additional server load the PS Plus Edition is anticipated to bring, we are currently not confident that we can guarantee the best online experience. Until we can ensure that everyone can enjoy the full social connected online experience, we will be postponing the release of the PS Plus Edition until further notice.

Driveclub on PS4

Hi everyone. Following Shuhei’s message yesterday, I’m here give to you an update on DRIVECLUB direct from Evolution Studios.

I’m proud to be leading the extremely talented and hard-working development team here at Evolution. As gamers first and foremost, we are determined to deliver the game we promised to the quality we know you expect.

We appreciate all of your support — it’s motivating and humbling for us to have such a vocal and supportive community. Your messages drive us to do everything we can to live up to our original ambition of making DRIVECLUB the game that invigorates the racing genre again.

Your great support deserves us to be open with you. I know we have been quiet for a while since we made the decision to delay the game, so I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know exactly why the team felt that DRIVECLUB needed more development. We wanted to make sure we got one important feature right.

The dynamic menu is key to how much fun you’re going to get out of the game because it is the glue that connects you to everyone else in the DRIVECLUB community. Whenever you fire up the game; between every race you play, and when you log in to DRIVECLUB on your phone or tablet, the dynamic menu has to be slick to ensure your experience is seamlessly connected. Essentially it’s where you discover what to play, and who to play with.

Driveclub on PS4Driveclub on PS4

It’s also absolutely vital to our ambition of growing a vibrant network of millions of connected clubs, who all share the excitement of driving amazing cars together. Whether they play just to have fun, or to complete every challenge and beat their rivals in every race, it’s this connected community who will keep the game fresh and enjoyable well after launch, so it makes sense for the connectivity to be perfect.

No racing title has ever combined the development of a socially charged, multi-platform dynamic menu with all the other connected online elements that DRIVECLUB delivers. We know that what we are creating here is hugely ambitious and we’re proud of the fact that we’re getting close now because we’re a relatively small studio. The progress we’re making is great, so I’m looking forward to showing you more as development continues and prove that all the hard work has been worth it.

While that work goes on, the rest of the team here is relentless when it comes to exploiting the power and confidence of PS4, so we’re also raising the bar even higher across other aspects of the game including:

  • Visuals — We’re constantly improving how stunning the game looks as we continue to optimize visuals and find new ways of pushing PS4. You can see for yourself how it looks right now in the latest video we shared yesterday because all the footage was captured on PS4 from the game. It’ll look even better in October.
  • Audio — It’s absolutely state of the art. We’re continuing to refine the authentic sounds that we have for each and every car in the game, and we’re going to put together videos that focus on this.
  • Driving — It already feels great to play and we’re continuing to add further layers to the physics to make it both more accessible for everybody and more sophisticated for experienced racers.
  • Clubs — We’re making it easier for you to keep up to speed with what’s going on in your club as part of the rework on the dynamic menus. We’ve also tweaked clubs to support up to 6 players instead of 12 (because the game is more fun with tightly-knit clubs and it paves the way for awesome 6-on-6 club races).
  • Tour — The difficulty curve for the campaign mode is becoming even smoother as we continue to optimize the vehicle handling and also refine the game’s AI for non-player racers.
  • Cars & Tracks — More time means more staggeringly detailed cars and exciting tracks, too. If you haven’t already, check out the Ferrari in the video released yesterday. There are loads more exciting cars for us to reveal in the coming months.

I’d also like to confirm that the PS Plus Edition of the game will be available on the same day as the full release. Offering a selection of cars and tracks from the complete version, we think it’s the perfect way for those new to the genre to get an idea of what the full DRIVECLUB experience is all about. Look out for more details on the PS Plus Edition very soon.

Thanks again to everybody for your continued support; it really is a huge source of inspiration for the team. We appreciate that there’s a lot of anticipation and excitement for everything that DRIVECLUB promises to be, so we hope that you understand why we won’t compromise on quality to rush it to you.

Driveclub on PS4

It’s been a long and hard Winter, but it’s great that we can finally start sharing updates with you again about all of the cool things that DRIVECLUB does. We don’t anticipate another quiet period for a while so you can expect to see plenty more from us in the coming weeks leading up to E3 2014!

More soon,
The DRIVECLUB Team

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78 Comments

  • 45@ so go for the full version. this is an AAA title. you don’t expect that the full version will be for free !

  • @50. Um please… This was not what we were told in October last year. Keep drinking the KoolAid
    Ps plus program for ps4 is just getting lamer by the month .

    Greatness awaits

  • What’s the point really. Why are you giving us 10 cars and 5 tracks 1 country?
    Assuming it’s to wet our whistles and get us to buy the full version …
    Sounds fair right?
    Well that is a DEMO or SAMPLE

    Paul Rustchynsky 30 April, 2014 @ 6:32 pm 50.1
    The PlayStation Plus Edition hasn’t changed. It’s hardly a demo because you get access to all of the game’s features online and offline. The difference is that you only have 10 cars and you can only race in one country (which gives you access to 5 tracks with 11 distinct variants).

  • 30 fps? BOO

  • Its just a demo for plus which will give you a trophy list you cant complete without buying the game. Id rather not have trophies included, and just call it a freakin demo.

  • 30 FRAMES PER SECOND?!?!?!???!?!??!!!

    The power of PS4. . . . . Forza 5 runs at 60 . . .

  • Will there ever be a motor storm 4 the best series that evolution studios has put out. I have a feeling that drive club will bomb because there’s to much social aspect to the game. Way to put it out at the same time the crew and pCARS comes out .

  • It truly amazes me how stupid so many people are, why do you guys ask the same questions over and over? If you read the article first most of those questions were answered. I’m sure more things will be talked about in depth at E3 in June . As far as the plus version it was never the whole game for free it was always just a little something to get you to buy the entire game. If it upsets some of you how about you don’t try the free version and just buy the whole game.

  • I am still very disappointed with a game such as this instead of a new Motorstorm. The PS4 is seriously lacking without any arcade style racers right now. Motorstorm was a launch title and a staple of the PS3. This game looks BORING. I am sure there are some who love this sort of thing but for those of us who are busy and don’t have time to build a career in a video game we just don’t have the time for this sort of thing. I sure hope a new Motorstorm is in development.

  • @ villdoc, you need to settle down, not sure where this self righteous attitude comes from but you need to get over your belief that you should get something for nothing and be happy with the fact something is being offered for free at all. These people have put years of their lives into developing this game and for some reason you think your entitled to just have the whole thing handed over to you, for the record they have not ever once said they were giving out the whole game for free, they said a “PS+ Edition”. It maybe a scaled back version of the game and rightly so but that hardly makes it a “demo”, what demo you know of that allows you to unlock trophies? Your constant beratement of the developer and the issue in addition to your clever “greatness awaits” comment just comes off as trolling which we dont need here, so if you cant conduct yourself with a little more decorum and be appreciative of what your being given then maybe you should find some other place to play.

  • 55@ LUCIFERSGLEAM hey you idiot. this is not the type of place to talk about forza, microsoft or that kind of crap. get outta here.
    plus with all that downgrade, i’m sure forza runs at 60fps.lol
    we are not the kind of persons who downgrades our game. we are sony. we have the most powerful console on the planet, so there is a reason that they go for 30fps.
    have nice life ;)

  • we still don’t even really know what this game is.

  • Back in September you, Paul, took to the internet to discuss the PS+ Edition and said “its [sic] the full game minus a few cars/tracks.” Assuming there are 5 tracks per country, and there are 5 countries, we’re missing 20 tracks. There’s no context in which 20 would be or could be considered “a few.” It was a lie, plain and simple, and Sony continuously used the line “the content in the Plus Edition is enough to platinum the game” to mislead people and misrepresent the amount of content it would be offering.

    Communication has long been a problem for Sony (the protracted silence during the PSN blackout being a particularly dark mark on the company’s record), but I thought the *lack* of communication was the big issue; this sort of doublespeak is worrying.

    And this is on top of the fact that Sony continually insisted, up until just a month before the console’s launch, that DC would be ready for the PS4’s release. If it needed a year’s worth of extra work, which it apparently did, that means Sony was either 1, happy to lie about the release date for a game that was clearly not ready to ship, or 2, seriously considering releasing a majorly unfinished game. Neither one speaks well for the company’s integrity. 1/2

  • The running narrative is that Sony stopped with the arrogance that characterized PlayStation in the previous generation and had reemerged, humble and sporting a player-first attitude. I bought into this narrative and resubscribed to Plus primarily for Drive Club, and to see Sony do this in the midst of its supposed reinvention disilludes me. I no longer see any reason to trust the things this company says or to believe that it will uphold whatever promises it makes- and I’m embarrassed for ever having done so.

    Sony is in rough financial shape and has been for a long time, resorting to selling a number of its assets just to slow its descent deeper into the red. I don’t see why this company would, even for one second, consider actions that might damage the support of a loyal fanbase that keeps one of its very few healthy businesses afloat. It baffles me.

    I consider myself a big PlayStation fan but this all really makes me question why that is. 2/2

  • This game looks amazing. I need a good racer since NFS: Rivals was kind of a letdown.

  • What would be the best steering wheel for this game? Not just for this one but for any racing game like GT also and future games. I don’t know anything about the wheels so maybe if you could list a few great ones and the prices (in UK sterling if possible). Thanks

  • @50: Except they said they’d give it to plus members for free on day 1. Then they delayed it for a year, and told us “Thanks for being so patient, here’s a demo to say thank you…”

  • Next thing I’d love to see is the full official car list and some gameplay of the most recent build. I’ve yet to see a Japanese car in Driveclub…

  • Alright listen, your game is beautiful looking. Really it is.

    That out of the way, all of that beauty is for naught when you are making a racing game running at 30fps. I’m sorry, but genres that should NOT be anything less than 60fps are FPS’, Fighting games, and RACING GAMES. Your beautiful game is simply eye candy that ignores the importance of a smooth gaming experience that is expected of a quality racing game.

    I know I’m going to catch heat from the usual suspects on this blog, but DO NOT WANT. Gonna pass, and wait for a racer that puts the eye candy as secondary and a smooth 60fps as a primary. Sorry guys.

  • @ rios. Your a ….. Well let’s just say you confirmed exactly what I said….
    It’s a demo to get you to buy the real game. Only back at release of ps4 drive club for ps plus was touted as more than what it is.
    Keep your tough guy panties and little leather jacket on. The world is a much better place with you here.
    If they would just call it a demo then it would be ok. But Nooo it’s this great big fancy PS PLUS edition …
    Pig needs a little lipstick

  • The purpose of a blog isn’t for a PR release. Why haven’t you answered anyone’s real questions?

  • Can’t wait.

  • Time will tell, as for me I appreciate a PS Plus Edition like promised. It would be a bit disappointing if what someone commented on 5 countries being available and just 1 on the PS Plus Edition, in which case it would seem like a sample.
    But sample, demo, or capped down I think I’ll still enjoy the game.

  • @30fps the game should look good, since it allows you to draw more on screen per frame than @60fps, the game would have still looked good though @60fps. I would have prefered a hit in the graphics and faster frame rate, than have more detail and a more sluggish response. Fast moving games like racers should always be @60fps not 30fps.

  • This should pretty much clear up just what crap they’ll be pushing to us. Whether you call it a demo, a beta, a sample, or whatever it is NOT the full version of the game (and I understand that no one ever said the words “full version” when it was announced as a free PS+ launch title but…).

    “That includes the explanation on why it won’t be possible to complete the single player Tour mode with the PlayStation Plus edition:
    Simply because the PlayStation Plus Edition doesn’t include all of the cars and tracks that you’ll need to complete DRIVECLUB Tour.”

    No more explanation is needed altho I expect Evolution to continue spindoctoring this until the game falls off of the radar. I will download the PS+ version and play it. I hope EVERYONE downloads the PS+ version and plays it. I hope NO ONE buys the retail version. I hope whoever made these decisions concerning the PS+ version loses his job and never works in the industry again. Period.

  • @75: You clearly don’t understand that it was never said to be the full version, because you’re whining about it.

    It was always displayed as a “PS+ Edition”. No other PS+ game has ever had that label before. Therefore… any confusion is on your delusion of thinking you’ll get a AAA game for free at launch. lolbishno

  • Ok so if you ask DriveClub about the PS3 wheels support…they said, “we love racing wheels! We’re working closely with Thrustmaster to support their awesome wheels already, and when Logitech support wheel
    peripherals on PlayStation 4, we’d love to support them in DriveClub
    too.”Adding to the racing wheel thought, he said, “We’re big fans of
    wheels, so whether its Logitech or Fanatec we’d love to support their
    wheels if they choose to bring them to PlayStation 4.”

    And when ask Logitech, they say it’s up to the developers and Sony? So who the fck is responsible for bring this shyt to PS4?? This is goddam annoying. I don’t want to buy another fcking Logitech wheel..hell fcking no!! And if they don’t bring it to PS4…fck you Logitech and fck Drive Club!!! Oh and fck Sony too for keeping it quiet…!!! Fck you all!!! No wheel…no deal!!!

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