ARK: Survival Evolved Coming to PS4, Project Morpheus

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ARK: Survival Evolved Coming to PS4, Project Morpheus

ARK: Survival Evolved on PS4, Project Morpheus

We just announced ARK: Survival Evolved and I’m here to tell you how excited we are about bringing this experience to PS4 and Project Morpheus. From the earliest stages of our development we knew we had an opportunity to create a game that pushes next-gen gameplay experiences in addition to providing awesome visuals. The result is that the world of ARK and its inhabitants feel like a real place that you can walk through, explore, and truly experience in your own way.

The PS4’s powerful hardware has allowed us to bring a scale and scope to the game that wasn’t previously possible in the console space. We’re shooting for the moon with this one, a fully persistent game world, tens of thousands of AI entities, totally destructible foliage and environment, and multiplayer on a huge scale. And yeah, we’ve got dinosaurs. Dinosaurs that you can ride! At release, we’re shooting for about 60 distinct species, and we don’t plan to just have them just wandering around as cannon fodder.

ARK: Survival Evolved on PS4, Project Morpheus

All creatures in ARK have their own living ecosystems, predator hierarchies, and an autonomy that exists outside of the players’ influences. Their interactions with each other intertwine with the way that players might use them, because almost every one of our creatures will be able to be tamed and used for peace or for war. The PS4 has the horsepower to pull this off, so we’re really excited to be finally bringing these kinds of next-generation gameplay experiences to consoles.

We didn’t stop there, though, because what’s better than experiencing all of this as if you were really there? After working for almost three years pioneering and creating high-end experiences for HMDs, I can tell you with good confidence that not much compares to soaring over the jungles and mountains of ARK’s islands on the back of your very own pteranodon. The feeling of immersion the team has created in this beautiful world simply has to be experienced first-hand; it is profound and impactful, and even for me was a little bit surprising when I first tried ARK in VR.

ARK: Survival Evolved on PS4, Project Morpheus

When you design an experience like this, one of the most important things is to not fall into the trap of focusing on one platform and type of input while letting the chips fall where they may on the rest. Just like a mouse versus a gamepad, you have to design with VR in mind from the beginning. All of your testing, all of your gameplay elements, they need to tie into the experience of wearing a VR headset, the different FOV, the perception of motion and presence that exists between looking at a flat computer screen and virtually “being there.” In the end we don’t just “allow” for VR, we recommend it — and ARK will be a richer game because of it.

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113 Comments

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  • LONG_DING_DONG69

    Wow this game looks incredible!!!

  • I can’t believe this is real. I. CANNOT. BELIEVE IT.

  • i like the way the game looks but seriously the trailer shows such violence toward the dinosaurs i wouldn’t be surprised if p.e.t.a did their usual thing seriously questionable

  • YES. YES a thousand times over.

  • As an Oculus Rift DK2 owner, I’m a little skeptical that the PS4/Morpheus combo is capable of the 120fps / greater than 4k resolution that’s needed for a compelling consumer VR experience. The Rift being 1080p 75/fps is already beyond the horsepower of the PS4 and it’s not a very good experience at those low specs. It sure would be nice to get the scoop on Project Morpheus from Sony to know just how they plan to pump out the high res/high frame rates required to make VR work AND enjoyable.

  • This sounds really neat, and I’m looking forward to hearing and seeing more of ARK, so please don’t be a stranger here.
    I’ve never experienced VR and have been really hyped for Morpheus and I’m glad to see that we’ll be able to experience real games with it. PS Move certainly had (a few) great titles, but it never became much more than a gimmick.

    Side note: This is current-gen. PS4 was only “next-gen” before it launched a year and a half ago. Now, if you are referring to making a next-gen game, you would be referring to PS5.

  • Morpheus will likely be better than all the alternative options on PC.

    Unless you have a really high end PC, or one that works exceptionally good.

    Having a PC that kinda plays things, will take you out of the moment of persistence, which is where the PS4 will shin in VR, because if you have to you can tone down graphics and settings, and optimize on a specific hardware set. Something you utterly can’t do on PC because everyone has a different setup.

    I could be wrong, but everything I have heard about the Oculus sounds like there’s just enough latency there to take people out of persistence regularly. Too regularly.

    To be honest I don’t even want Morpheus for the Morpheus games. I’ll buy that thing just to be able to wear it while my wife is going to sleep without disturbing her. (sometimes she has to wake up at 8:00 a.m. and I have to be at work at 5:00 p.m. and I’d rather not wake up and be awake for 9 hours before work)

  • The main question I have is, WHEN?, because this is absolutely beautiful.

  • The game looks amazing, but could you PLEASE add offline single-player support? I mean, there are heaps of us that would love to play a game like this by ourselves, and not have to rely on an internet connection to play the game. No need to make an elaborate story, just let us play the game and access its features offline! My dreams were crushed when I found out B.C. for the Xbox was cancelled. This looks much better, except it requires an internet connection… bah

  • crazyman808urmom

    I was wondering if there is a beta or social packs and when does it come out because I’m defiantly getting this game plz reply

  • I really look forward to VR and it’s nice to see a good looking game being made for it. I hope to be able to try it out someday.

  • supergamerguynr1

    Is it possible to play it without project morpheus?

  • I got to try Morpheus at the Playstation Experience and was already excited for VR, but this is the first game that I can’t wait to play in VR. The other demos were cool but this an experience that’s reason enough to buy Morpheus. Cant wait !

  • @ Seluhir: RE: your comments in current post #39… I will give you every single one of your points. I’m definitely not saying to blind buy something just for the sake of supporting a company. And as you’ve made clear in many a post, you don’t like first-person views, which is going to be the majority of VR experiences. A lot of people don’t mind FP-views. And obviously, you wouldn’t buy something you have no faith will deliver experiences you want to play. Personally, I still love my Vita and have an embarrassingly large backlog of games on it. It delivered on what I wanted for sure. But a lot of people wanted nothing but huge AAA games for it, and I’m betting too many people who were interested in the system were waiting for that big second wave of titles, which never came, because initial sales didn’t justify it. So the people waiting for the games essentially killed the system.

    People who are excited for what VR is aiming to deliver right now need to invest in VR once it’s available, the way millions of people bought the PS4 “while it had no games”. Otherwise, VR won’t gain ground. That’s all I’m saying. Too many people sitting on the fence kills tech.

  • so when will this game be playable on the ps4

    ps. this will be the game off the year

  • looks awesome !! I have read in several places that the game may require an internet connection in order to play. Is this correct ??

  • @64 – Sounds reasonable enough, but Vita has sold more than 10 million units and it feels like a dead platform to most people. And really, I don’t think Sony is to blame for that; I think it’s more that big-time game developers (and their publishers, who only care about profit) don’t feel like pouring all of their resources into a handheld. Same deal with PS Move. I do think Project Morpheus has the potential to be bigger and receive more support from game studios, but we should still expect the vast majority of games to lack VR support.
    I may buy it on day 1, but I manage my expectations accordingly so I’m rarely disappointed, and I wouldn’t want to spend all my game time in VR anyway.

  • What game engine is it running on? And if you could compare it to other games out there such as on PC, is it kinda like Rust?

  • Awesomepossum19

    Do you need a cd headset to play the game or can you just use your controller?

  • Awesomepossum19

    I meant vr headset

  • So the first quarter of 2016 will the game be fully released on ps4?

  • This game alone is awesome and exciting! The game coming to PS4 alone is exciting… but now you’re putting Morpheus into the mix? WHAT. Not only does gaming need more bad ass dino games, but VR is totally the cherry ontop! Thank you all for making this happen. Super excited!

  • Will this game be available for playing on ps4 in a beta version in a few months time?

  • After looking at the announcement trailer 3 times (and counting) and looking all over the web for more information, I have tons of things I’d love to ask. First of all, most important question for me atm is: will the dragon be tameable. I know it might sound stupid, but I am fascinated with them, so it actually is a serious question. From what I’ve learned, “taming” a creatures, requires you to bring him “down”, but I personally thought (and I also think you’ve thought of that too) that it would be fun if each creature had a different taming method (or not THAT varied, but you’ll see my point) not as in every single different animal requires that nooo. But for example, most herbivores should be fairly docile from the start, so a “lasso” or something similar should be enough as a requirement, then adding some kind of minigame where you have to wrestle the beast “down” like you’ve mentioned in the mammoth pages. Then come carnivores… You have to admit the same method of operating would be akward with a massive T-rex… So why not hatch them? Or capture them in a pen and have to go through many tasks for whichever creature we are talking about to finally obey you.

  • Maybe even variance in that, we saw a smilodon in the splash art for the video. So I guess since he is a mammal he would be different from a raptor to tame. And finally the dragon, personally I think we should not be able to tame a full-grown dragon, aim for the egg! That would an absolutely amazing end-game goal! (one of them of course) with you having to go through a series of things to hatch the egg, like fire temp (maybe even going as far as looking at the temp to make your baby dragon Male or female!). Talking about genders… how about breeding? like farming the smaller creatures to keep a staple supply of food? I know that dodos are allll over the island, but I’d find it funner to make a small pen with them breeding, me having to find a way to differentiate between male and female, so I can stop them from over-breeding so on and so forth. Furthermore, you mentioned there would be 60 Dinos on full release of the game, does that include other kind of creatures? and also, will you continue updating the game after that? with free content or dlc stuff? (which I wont mind as long as you keep the material as high of a quality!) I also wondered about character creation and customization.

  • Finally, knowing the game will have a bigger importance around multiplayer, but also knowing that a solo mode is possible (sort of, you gotta make your own server right?) Will there be modding support? (just a question, because if yes, how can a multiplayer focused game work with mods? Maybe graphical?) I hope you guys read this ^^

  • This is going to be awesome havnt played my ps4 in a while but looking forward to this. Add me on ps4

    Get Your Portable ID!

  • Super excited for this so have a few questions :)

    Do you have to have Internet connection to play? :)

    Will you need ps+ to play? :)

    Can you have just you and friends in a server? Like invite only? :)

    Can you have just yourself in a sever? :)

    How does the base making work for when you come back to the game but are in a different server? :)

    Please answer what you can and best of luck with it :D

    • I’m sure there might be a single player, but if you want to play in lobbies I would think you would need ps+.To play with friends might need to buy server. Separate servers different means brand new. Ark website for help: http://playark.com

  • Yes please.

  • Will this game actually be finished? I’m just a little skeptical because it seems like most games that go into early access are never finished now and the developers just run off with the cash… (*cough* STOMPING LAND). If it ends up being a full finished game then I will be buying this game 100% because it looks awesome as hell.

  • Reminds me of a mix between land of the lost & turok@Jesse Rapczak

  • Im hoping i dont have to wait until 2016 for this game to come out, im just sick and tired of hearing an amazing game like this and i have to wait for a whole freaking year to play it. I mean come on, i have to wait with no mans sky, dayz, tomorrow children, dead island 2, starbound, wild, and the forest. Just please, try to at least get a beta or alpha version out for the 4. The ps4 this year with games sucks, and im getting really tired of it.

  • 2017???????

  • Hello developers of ARK,

    could you please release and early acces for ps4 and xbox one aswell …. otherwise we have to wait untill summer 2016 ( which is almost a whole year ) and pc would get it at june 2nd and on ps4 we could find some bugs and crashes aswell that doesn’t exist for pc which makes it better for you guys to fix bugs

  • I am truly excited about this title but i am wondering if the beta and or alpha will be available to the ps4. Also would like for no NDA so we can stream it and take video clips for bug fixs.

  • Is the EARLY ACCESS coming to PS4 in June as well as PC ?

  • When is this game coming out cuz I’m hype

  • seriously guys…shut up and take my money!!!

  • Hey when is ARK coming to ps4 I’ll like to know sooner or later I’m getting my ps4 in September and I’ll really like to know when it’s comes out

  • Hey when is ARK coming to ps4 I’ll like to know sooner or later I’m getting my ps4 in September and I’ll really like to know when it’s released

  • Will it be only windows or on mac (asking about the steam download)

  • pls answer me

  • This may sound silly, but the way the article was describing it, it sounds like you buy the game separately for the Morpheus, Am i just seeing things, or do we have to buy this for the morpheus like its a separate console, or we just buy for PS4 and the Morpheus works with it?…

    Sounds silly I know, just want to make sure whether im reading that wrong

  • When is this coming out for PS4? Also is this like minecraft but more, like.. not blocks? and can you also swim and ride dolphins or something? AND IS THERE SWORDS? Thanks. looking forward to the game.

  • Will it be coming to PS3 ever???

  • What will this game be rated? T?

  • I seen Swiftor play this and let me say. You guys did a beautiful job with this one I can’t wait.TAKE MY MONEY NOW

  • joshi_crusade267

    Hi I would like to know if you need playstation plus for ark to play online

  • Oh my god this game is going to make my life! Is there any beta sign ups at all??? Dinosaurs are literally my favorite thing! And now that I know this game will be on project morpheus!?!? I won’t even second guess buying this game!!!

  • Just tell us the release date, we’ve known this is a good game already

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