Joy Ride still due out this year

By Tom Bramwell Published 19 February, 2010

Microsoft admits to slip.

Microsoft has confessed that Big Park's upcoming Avatar and microtransaction orientated Xbox Live racing game Joy Ride has slipped.

The platform holder put a jolly old spin on it, telling Joystiq that it was "thrilled" by the E3 2009 reaction to the game and "committed to delivering the most robust experience to the community", but admitted the game was merely listed as "2010" for now.

Joy Ride is due out exclusively for Xbox 360 and will be free to all Xbox Live users.

Check out our Joy Ride trailer to get the measure of it and look out for more coverage soon.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Emmit_Assassin #1 2 years ago

    This has now officially been renamed Joy Ride: Forever.

  • woodnotes #2 2 years ago

    It was only announced last June!

    Anyway, I'm surprised MS bought this dev studio so quickly - before their first game.

  • Moribundman #3 2 years ago

    All Xbox Live users? REALLY?

    That'll be nice since you have to be a Gold member to play 1 vs 100, last.fm, Facebook, Twitter or ANY multiplayer games...

    Not bothered myself as I'm Gold and looking forward to this, but it's always refreshing to be pedantic first thing on a Friday. Keeps your brain sharp...

  • metalangel #4 2 years ago

    Can't really see this usurping Burnout Paradise as fun car game of choice.

  • optimusprym8 #5 2 years ago

    and £2.91 per month is too much for all that?

    agreed with farticus though, SEGA All Stars Racing and ModNation are somewhat disappointing

  • miiiguel #6 2 years ago

    I thought this had litle to do with Burnout.

  • Hix15 #7 2 years ago

    I'm sure silver members will have a single player component open to them, why would MS cut out potential in-game content sales?

  • woodnotes #8 2 years ago

    lol @ everyone getting a "-1"

    The developers reading this? :)

  • Widge #9 2 years ago

    The karts on Modnation steer like the cars on Saints Row 2, which is great if you like taking 90degree turns into scenery.

  • Moribundman #10 2 years ago

    I'm not complaining about paying £2.91 a month. The only service I will NOT pay for is Sky. And that's optional.

    MS really should have accepted that BBC iPlayer should be free to silver members though. That was just f***ing silly.

  • homerramone #11 2 years ago

    Avatar and microtransaction orientated Xbox Live racing game Joy Ride has slipped.

    Now being renamed to
    Joy Ride:Alan Wake

  • irve77 #12 2 years ago

    i agree with Moribundman ... MS' stance on iplayer is a really disrespectful way to treat your customers

    I doubt i will ever go gold to be honest .. save that money and buy a Ps3 at some point

    Now if only they would stop adding the gamerpoints for DLC i don't have to my games .. it's ruining my gamerscore stats !!

  • muscleblade #13 2 years ago

    Nothing from Anthony Daniels?

    He probably doesnt know this is a 360 exclusive.

  • fknetwork #14 2 years ago

    It makes me laugh regarding Sonic all star racing,
    Over at NeoGaf one of the developers called "SOL" is trying to defend the game no matter what, loads of people complaining about the framerate he just says its a demo what do you expect, an excuse for everything.

    But yeah, Sonic racing is a huge disappointment, it had great potential but the framerate let the whole thing down!
    Edited by 1 at 19/02/10 @ 16:43

  • uzivatel #15 2 years ago

    @irve77: the stance of BBC is imo not much better

  • RobotRocker #16 2 years ago

    loads of people complaining about the framerate he just says its a demo what do you expect, an excuse for everything.

    Actually, bad framerate is a very common problem with 360 demos as most are un-optimised code submitted to Microsoft 2/3 months before a gold master is created. BioShock had an atrocious framerate in its demo as did Red Faction Guerilla. Both of those games had the frame rate much more improved when the final game arrived. Demos are also more susceptible to cache issues. A few players have said that clearing their cache gets rid of the majority of framerate issues in the sonic demo as it did in BioShock. So while you think he is making excuses, its a problem for a lot of developers. The PS3 version runs at a locked 30FPS in its demo too.

    As for Modnation racers. It is a beta. What the christ do you expect?

    In conclusion. Gamers are spoiled brats these days. Back then we had 25FPS Diddy Kong Racing dumping frames all over the place and by god we loved it.

  • RobotRocker #17 2 years ago

    I dont know if you played the same PS3 demo I did but I saw nothing at all that suggested a framerate dip even when it got super busy.

    there's already a review out from GamesTM that gives the game 5/10 and one of the reasons for that is the poor framerate.

    Early review code can tell porkies. There was a preview event last week and it was reported the game was running at a solid 30FPS so I wouldn't take that as gospel.

    Interestingly, Mario Kart Wii is probably one of the worst offenders this gen for framerate and is shockingly bad for a Nintendo game but I never saw much about that over EG. Selective memories much?

  • RobotRocker #18 2 years ago

    The review was only published a week before the game is released, so chances are they're reviewing a retail version.

    Magazine reviews are done with code given to them by publishers. GamesTM's review was more than likely finished in Late January, well before the game went gold and the magazine was finished a week or two before publication. They don't have the luxury of being Eurogamer and have a lead-in time before publication. The only time a print mag would review retail code was if it was released during the production time of a magzine and the publisher either sent them an early retail copy or the magazine bought it itself.

    I haven't played Mario Kart Wii for ages, but I played it a lot when it first came out and I didn't notice any framerate issues that affected my enjoyment of the game. I'm not sure what the framerate of Mario Kart Wii has to do with this particular game though.

    The framerate dips when it gets busy on some courses (Grumble Volcano and Koopa Cape in particular) and occasionally outright tanks on Rainbow Road. Multi-player is atrocious too. Four player is a slide show at times. I also brought it up since everyone decided to bring up Modnation and Sonic Racing in a joyride thread. Why not bring up the standard all those other kart games need to reach?

    You can see a frame rate analysis here [link url=http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=5ajLkLdIxgY
    ]http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=5ajLkLdIxgY
    [/link]

    Average framerate is a solid 30FPS with slight dips. I think NeoGAF is being NeoGAF and being petulant. Again.
    Edited by 1 at 20/02/10 @ 23:38

  • metalangel #19 2 years ago

    The Sonic Racing WhateverIt'sCalled guy should be apologizing for the crippling balancing issues in his game. Reverse the controls powerups? Horrible rubberbanding AI? One mistake (or indeed, hit by another opponent's attack) and you might as well restart as you've no hope of winning?

    Frame rates are the least of their worries with that game.