ModNation Racers Vita dev "looking at" online head-to-head patch

By Fred Dutton Published 24 January, 2012

But claims mode was barely used in PSP version.

ModNation Racers: Road Trip studio Sony San Diego is "looking at" adding an online head-to-head mode to the game following fan outcry at news the game will ship without one.

Game director Erich Waas took to the comments thread on the original PlayStation Blog post that fueled the controversy yesterday, offering further explanation as to why his team had decided not to include online head-to-head play.

Waas argued that the percentage of gamers who used the head-to-head mode in the PSP version of the game was in single digits, hence the decision to cut it.

"It's great to see people passionate about ModNation Racers: Road Trip," he wrote.

"As a gamer, if I saw a game I was looking forward to playing didn't have a feature I wanted, I'd be bummed too.

"I didn't expect everyone to read the blog and agree with me or for the blog to smooth over strong feelings on the matter. My intent was to explain the position the development team took when designing the feature set.

"A couple of you have mentioned that MNR PSP had online play and this is of course true," he continued. "But part of the decision to not include MNR:RT at launch was that the percentage of MNR PSP gamers who played online. The percentage was in the single digits.

"I imagine if we said MNR PSP didn't have online head-to-head prior to its launch, the reaction would be the same. But in the end, not many actually played online head-to-head."

Waas then added that Sony San Diego is looking at adding in online head-to-head play via a post-launch patch.

"All this said, the development team is looking at online head-to-head in a patch. This wouldn't be available day-1 of the PlayStation Vita launch but it is indeed something being researched as I type this."

An additional post from Waas suggested that the decision to leave the mode out was also a result of a tight development schedule.

"Our choice for the launch was more about what features the team could implement within the development schedule and what online usage patterns we'd seen with our own MNR PSP title as well as other games to date.

"It's not that we don't think head-to-head is a good feature - we do! We felt that the asynchronous features would be used by a bigger portion of the game's demographic."

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 4 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Ajent #1 4 months ago

    I hope they do add in the feature.

    Although I wonder if the damage is already done and people have lost faith in them as developers for making such a huge over sight. This was a potential day one game for me until I heard it wasn't going to have online multiplayer.

    But, if they do add it then it will likely be a game I pick up within the months after purchasing my shiny Vita. Fingers crossed for now.

  • sfp_noodle #2 4 months ago

    Well considering the PSP has been dead outside of Japan for the best part of two years now, it's no surprise that activity was low. The Vita is a new console and designed for Western audiences. It will have a far more active online community. Plus a game which relies so much on it's online community to make levels and share them, it really doesn't make sense to not include it.

    I think it's fairly obvious online play was left out because they wanted to get it out of the door for launch day. Patching an online mode really can't be that difficult. Lots of games have done that this gen. Tekken 6 is just one game that springs to mind and it only used a minimal 16mb of HDD space.
    Edited by sfp_noodle at 24/01/12 @ 21:15

  • Pinky_Floyd #3 4 months ago

    If added in this fashion it will be 6 months down the line when most people have stopped playing. It will be a bolt on that has suffered from not being developed in parallel with the game.

    In fact, I believe this is just damage limitation and that no such patch will ever be forthcoming.

  • dadrester #4 4 months ago

    Fair enough reason to hold off if no one used it, but the PSP wasn't ever trumpeted as the always connected social platform the Vita is. Still, going by Japanese sales of the 3G version it might be a repeat.

  • alcides #5 4 months ago

    "fan outcry"

    I think even the Pope rolled his eyes to heaven.

    I'll buy it when the patch is out.

  • Dismiss #6 4 months ago

    The choice has to be there, even if it doesn't get much use. After all, newly released consoles are not great for local multiplayer, for the simple reason that not many people have the bloody things. And, without multiplayer, what good is a kart game?

  • vizzini #7 4 months ago

    As much as I enjoyed the free copy of the PSP version after the PSN downtime, and have since completed the single player and loved it, the screen resolution combined with the short draw distance and scene complexity made it a completely different proposition for playing online than say Mario Kart DS(which I hit hard when I owned a DS). In single player you can hit restart quickly to refine your racing and avoid wasting time. Where as multiplayer needs to be easy to race well without fatal mistakes, which the psp version wasn't able to do.

    The other downside of the PSP version was that track creation only allowed either a basic oval or u-shape, making the desire to publish and play online somewhat less appealing than the Playstation 3 version, where most people play their own and others creations.

    Provided the graphics are clean enough on the PSV to allow users to easily make last minute adjustments and the controls are responsive enough for the frame-rate, and comfortable enough to do all the techniques simultaneously, shield or weapon, with super hop or boosted powerslide, without crashing because of one unforeseen pixel turning into an obstacle out of nowhere then people will play it and love the online.

    edit: typo
    Edited by vizzini at 24/01/12 @ 21:37

  • FenderMaster #8 4 months ago

    Vita doesn't have a huge installed base, and even if it sells out at launch, worldwide Vita sales will still be in the low millions, so developers have quite a small potential audience. Not every Vita owner would buy this, even with online play, and this is probably lower on most peoples to buy list than Uncharted, Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Gravity Daze and possibly even Everybodies Golf.

    They probably had a lower development budget in order to offset potentially low sales, so it's totally understandable that the first thing to go might be a feature that 90%+ of the previous games buyers never used.

    Ideally a studio won't limit themselves based on low expectations, especially at launch where you really need to sell the system and make people want to buy a Vita, but the previous games were just modestly successful, so they probably made the right decision.

    I know alot of people here are disappointed and now will not buy the game, but honestly speaking, Eurogamer readers are a vocal minority, as are online gamers in general.

  • onezeonx #9 4 months ago

    Post deleted at 22:28:26 24-01-2012

  • alcides #10 4 months ago

    You don't go out of business if one of your products doesn't do as well as expected, nor put out a half-assed effort. I think the utter disbelief and the disgust of the players was about this being plain lazy.

    Selling dumbed-down PSPs with no online doesn't help the figures go up either.

  • oldschoolsoviet #11 4 months ago

    Erm, didn't the PSP version require PSN access ? As opposed to in-house servers ?

    PSN doesn't really like CFW.

  • suhawk75 #12 4 months ago

    @alcides - plain lazy or limited budget

    Getting online MP working isn't easy (just ask Konami!)

  • NotSoSlim #13 4 months ago

    Well they need to add it but this is damage limitation.

    Will buy when cheap

  • toythatkills #14 4 months ago

    If he'd just said "we didn't include it because nobody played it before," that would have been fine, I think everyone could understand that reasoning.

    The issue comes about when you lie about why you're not including it, and pretending it's because you have other "innovative" features like ghosts and leaderboards instead.

  • DodgyPast #15 4 months ago

    At least they back tracked and told the truth.

    I think marketing people often suffer from false hubris... Thinking the customer is too stupid to see through even the most transparent lies.

    Sure later on in a platform's life there'll be a fair amount of more casual consumers you can try to con... But trying to pull the wool over the eyes of launch day consumers is pretty dumb.

    They should probably commit to the patch asap... Otherwise they risk this sticking in people's memories.

  • Triggerhappytel #16 4 months ago

    It doesn't matter whether folk used it in the PSP version; in a racing game competitive online gameplay is a box that really has to be ticked.

    I hope they go ahead and include it in a patch.

  • jefranklin18 #17 4 months ago

    So evidence he has suggests that the feature was not widely used and yet they have to add it because of "user feedback" - does this fall into the whiny gamer category?

  • Ryze #18 4 months ago

    Online activity on the PSP was sparse, because the online experience on the PSP was

    SHIT, SHIT, SHIT.

    Of course a flagship launch title, which Sony might hope will demonstrate the console's best features, should include online play.

    It's a BLOODY HANDHELD - YOU HAVE TO BUY ANOTHER HANDHELD TO PLAY WITH 2 PLAYERS LOCALLY.

    Get a clue. Fools.