Getaway PS3 was only in pre-production

via Eurogamer


Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has revealed more about why The Getaway PS3 and Eight Days were cancelled - stating that both titles were only in the pre-production phase.

"People were doing the right things on the projects, and there were things in the games that were working really well," he told Threespeech.

"But the projects were coming to the end of the pre-production stage, and that is the time when we evaluate every product. Because after that, we would assign more resources to them, and they would really become major investments.

"This is a regular appraisal process for every project," Yoshida continued. "We do evaluate and cancel projects all the time, because we do start more projects than we finish, and if we finished the same number of projects that we started, that would mean we were not taking any risks at all, and that wouldn’t move our industry on any further."

The Getaway and Eight Days were first shown at E3 in May 2005, but only in tech demo form. Hardly any more was said about the games until last month, when Sony cancelled development on both titles, citing a need to reallocate resources.

At least network service Home is still on track. When asked by Threespeech whether it'll be here in time for Christmas Yoshida replied, "We certainly hope so - every indication is positive."

So what's with the delay? "With the timing of the launch, we’ve always set target dates, such as the end of last year or spring of this year, but our problem is always implementing features, testing with beta users, getting feedback and making modifications," said Yoshida.

"When we become confident that it is good enough to make it available to all users, that would be the right time. We have been making good progress, but recently, we have been thinking that this fall is the timing we will work towards."