Studio Wildcard: 'We Wish Sony had an Early Access Program' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 February 2016 / 4,318 Views
Studio Wildcard, the developer behind Ark: Survival Evolved, wishes that Sony had an Early Access program like Microsoft has on the Xbox One and Valve has on Steam.
"We're pretty excited about PS4," Studio Wildcard co-founder and creative director Jesse Rapczak told GameSpot. "We wish Sony had an early access program, and a lot of people have been asking us for it. We just kind of got to say, 'Well you know, it's not really up to us. It's the way Sony runs things, the game pretty much has to be finished.'
"There are a few exceptions that we're not quite sure why they made an exception for one game or the other, but Ark is in the state where at present time unless it's finished, it's not coming out on PS4 until they have some other program that allows us to do that. That being said we are really excited about it.
"It feels weird to say this, but fortunately the Sony players will benefit greatly from the Xbox early access. Even though they're different platforms, they're both consoles. Console gamers have lots of similarity; it doesn't matter what platform you're playing on. That being said, all of the feedback we're getting from Xbox is really great for whatever console we ever launch Ark on.
"It's unfortunate that some gamers can't experience that right now and take part in development as the Xbox players are, but you know, I do encourage anybody who's a PlayStation fan and has a PS4 to ask Sony for the program; maybe they'll decide to let a game like ours be in an early access-type program. Also if they do want to be involved there's still PC. Even if you've got an older PC you can still play the game on PC, give us feedback. A lot of the changes that we're making on Xbox will be rolled back into the PC version eventually like the way the controller works and things like that.
"It's not like they can't get involved; it's just like, 'Hey find a PC that you can play Ark on and try it play it there. Know that eventually it will come to PS4 and you'll be able to play it there as well.'"
ARK: Survival Evolved is available on the Xbox One and Windows PC as an Early Access title. The PlayStation 4 release will be available later.
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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I'm fine sticking to the way Sony does it. I don't want to buy incomplete indie games. I know lots of games have bugs these days on release, but I don't like that either.
Or you could just "finish" your game, whatever that means. Not like finished games dont have a patches, added content, dlc etc etc after they launch anyway.
OFC they are excited about PS4 its a huge platform, from my experience on PC and STEAM early access has been mixed, sometimes great, usually dissapointing but the worst part is many times you played the "beta" or "alpha" so much, you don't really care about the game when it finally does release and the version you paid for turned out to be so much less then what other played later.
That's kind of how I feel towards AAA games that release in a bad state but never get patched and left for dead, though at least with good early access games and devs you have better chances of having a more complete game with more content support. PC is also a huge platform for those types of games as well.
I agree with malistix1985. If I pay for a game and it's not finished yet, I'll continue playing it until I get bored of it. Months later, when I hear that it's finally "done," I'm going to be much less likely to come back and play the final version, cause I played the "early access" version and got sick of it. There likely won't be enough updated in the game to make it feel worthy of a revisit at that time, so it's best for me to just wait until the final release.
No thanks. I hear enough moaning about remasters and indies, rather they not add unfinished games to the bitchlist.
Not the same. People are angry about early releases of games that are buggy to meet a release window. Selling a product as early access is more honest. The complaing about remasters is dumb given some sell great, people want them.
I'd be more on board with this if Early Access wasn't so criminally abused and ARK's coding/optimization so atrocious.
in this day of X86 consoles If you have early development on say PC why do you need it on PS4 .XBone there maybe a case for Wii U.
you can carry over everything to the other two when you come out of ea and you don't have to split yourself across all platforms plus you still get that ea benefit.
No thanks to early access on PS4. You guys can keep that feature.
Ark was a solid game with Early Access. Some games are complete turds in that program though.
Still, nicer to have the option than to not have the option. Like EA Access.
Hell no! Fuck early access and the lazyass greedy developers who abuse it.
No thanks. Just finish your game instead.
Oh please no! I wouldn't be surprised a bunch of games would just brick you console.
Why do they even want gamer to pay for an unfinished game, man just finish your game and let the gamer experience the complete game.
"I can't believe gamers are so frivolous that they even spend their money on games that are advertised as "not finished and still under development" and then turn around and bitch about having to pay for microtransactions, dlc and season passes on other games."
not me but good point
"Hey find a PC that you can play Ark on and try play it there". Almost reminds me of the time Xbox folk were told to buy a PS4 for SFV, only with Ark it's a limited time frame. Still it would be a boon for those devs to get more on board with giving them important feedback. Better to get feedback than no feedback these days.
