As you’ve probably noticed, there’s been a bit of a hiccup with a couple of the PS4 launch titles, namely Watch Dogs and the exclusive DriveClub. The question is, what’s causing the hold up? Well, here at StickTwiddlers HQ, we’ve been having a bit of a think…
5) Gotta Catch ‘Em All
They’re all playing Pokemon! You can’t go three tweets on our Twitter feeds of late without seeing a slew of friend code requests or a snap of some Poke-innuendo. Facebook is overrun with people comparing their Pokemon teams and arguing over the best starter. It’s not outside the realms of possibility that all of the development staff who should be working on these two titles are mumbling something about bug testing, whilst busily trying to land an elusive Clefairy or troublesome Jigglypuff. Gaming addiction, it’s a curse. Mind you, they could always be…
4) Putting Up With The Po-Po
There’s one possibility as to why Watch Dogs has been delayed. All of the development staff have been arrested. Hear me out, because you’re talking about a game which centres around a hacking mechanic. I know full well from my own days in software development that all devs have a touch of hacker about them – hell it’s where half of them started out. Maybe they got a little to enthused by the in-game hacking and decided to test out their skills in the real world, bringing the boys in blue to their door. Maybe not. We don’t want to slander anyone’s good name. Perhaps they’re just…
3) Building The Allure
You know who Valve is, right? Of course you do, they’re the guys who won’t tell you when Half Life 3 is coming. The buzz surrounding Valve is constant, a never-ending stream of whispers, rumours and free publicity by folk who just want to know when the next gobbet of Gordon Freeman goodness is coming to stores. So, maybe the guys at Ubisoft and Evolution realised the amount of free PR they could pick up by holding off on release. Wouldn’t surprise me if they never release either of these titles, leaving them forever more as some kind of holy grail of gaming. No? No, I suppose not. Well, maybe they’re…
2) Cursing The Sales Team
As I mentioned before, I used to work in software development. We always dreaded a visit from our sales team, because it invariably went something like this:
SALESPERSON: “Hey, I’ve promised That Really Big Company LTD a new mod for their database package”
DEV: “To do what?”
SALESPERSON: “It needs to handle stock and shipping and barcoding and all that.”
DEV: “They’re not set up for that. We could maybe do it, but we’re looking at six months of solid coding time.”
SALESPERSON: “I said they could have it by tomorrow lunchtime.”
DEV: “… What?”
SALESPERSON: “Oh and it has to turn the coffee machine on for them when they get in each morning. That’s cool, yeah?”
At which point the salesperson would find themselves broken and bleeding, lying under a pile of assorted, hastily thrown laptops.
Perhaps it’s a similar scenario here. The PR guys have promised everyone a couple of sweet sounding games, the devs are currently bug fixing the last released title and wondering when the hell someone will tell them what the next project is. Hmm, does seem a bit unlikely, I admit. Oh, I’ve got it! They’re dealing with…
1) The Trouble With Trademarks
Watch Dogs. Watchdog. They’re close enough, right? I’d bet you a fiver that the BBC are currently trying to sue Ubisoft for breach of trademark or some such legal nonsense. It all makes sense! The BBC are forever making cutbacks, so they’re obviously short of funds. I mean, look at the botch job they did trying to ready Anne Robinson’s face for HD. So, when they spotted this they decided to take a “where there’s blame, there’s claim” approach and recruited Lionel Hutz to sue the proverbial pants off of Ubisoft. Not sure who’d be suing over DriveClub, but let’s face it there’s always a lawsuit if you look hard enough.
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