Update about Path of Exile on PlayStation 4

Looking forward to day one chronic rerollitise :-/

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r0nner wrote:

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we won't be able to announce a firm release date until around two weeks before the launch

in two weeks we have mid March..... no announce yet

Something weird is happening with the PS4 release. I guess there is no point of waiting for any update from GGG?

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samtallon wrote:

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r0nner wrote:

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we won't be able to announce a firm release date until around two weeks before the launch

in two weeks we have mid March..... no announce yet

Something weird is happening with the PS4 release. I guess there is no point of waiting for any update from GGG?

It is Sony cert process. Not much GGG can do.

patiently waiting since december.. :(

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bimbobaggings wrote:

It is Sony cert process. Not much GGG can do.

I believe this is the case, yes.

However I don't think the various interviews with Chris Wilson, which talk about the PS4 version and it's delays, are helping the situation at all. GGG seem to be trying to shoulder more of the responsibility for the delays than they really should be.

Sony is a difficult company to work with, much more difficult than Microsoft, since they're leading the console-race at the moment; this is a known fact. You only have to look at numerous other examples over the past generation to see this. The most well-known example being Bethesda, who pushed really hard to get console mods on the PS4 versions of Skyrim and Fallout 4, resulting in PS4 mod support for those games being delayed for MANY months behind the XBox One versions and heavily-gimped to boot. This situation with PoE is remarkably similar, with us players feeling out of the loop for what seems like an eternity, and no clear light at the end of the tunnel in sight.

The reasons Chris has given are all fair and valid, however I don't feel they're the real cause of the delays.

Let's look at the latest "reason", ie. GGG didn't want to launch PoE in the middle of a league, and decided it would be better to delay the game until the start of Synthesis. A great idea on paper... in practice not so great, especially since there are a ton of holes we can poke in it.

For starters, the PS4 version won't arrive in time for the START of Synthesis, or even a week late. At the earliest, it will arrive 2 or 3 weeks into the league, though since the end isn't in sight there's no guarantee it will even appear until the league is almost over, or later. There's no guarantee that the most recent delay will see the game arrive any sooner in the league than it previously might have launched during the last one.

Another problem is Sony Certification, which is unpredictable and problematic. Common sense would dictate that GGG should allow Sony to certify the game, and totally disregard when the certification will complete. Sony will not simply put PoE up on the PSN Store the moment it passes certification - GGG will still need to be involved in the process of setting the release date and launching the game.

If GGG had left the game in Sony's hands, and allowed them to certify the game over the Christmas period, and Sony found nothing wrong with the game, shortly after the team returned from their Christmas break there could have been a message waiting from Sony that certification is complete, and that the game was cleared for launch as soon as they're ready. The game wouldn't have blundered it's way onto the store at some random point between Christmas and New Year, when GGG are on their holidays and unable to provide technical support during that critical period.

I don't think Chris is lying, I trust that what he says is 100% true. But at the same time I think what he's told us are "silver-linings" to a problem which (for NDA-related reasons) he can't fully elaborate on.

Saying that the delay was a good thing, because it allowed GGG to continue to improve the game, was a bit of a blunder to be honest.

We live in an age where we expect games to be continually patched and fixed after launch. Why would it be any different for PoE? Why is it "better" that GGG are able to work on, and apply, the games first performance patch before we even get to see the game?

The first reason that springs to mind is "first impressions are important", which of course is true. However, games seldom ever launch in a "perfect" state, and you can always trust that new and horrible bugs and problems will appear in any game shortly after launch. It doesn't look bad on a game if it launches with bugs and performance problems - it looks bad on a game if a developer fails to speedily respond to and fix those problems.

What we're left with is a sense that some aspect of the game must have been so utterly terrible as to be embarrassing, or the game must have been utterly unplayable in some way. That's very unlikely to be the truth of the matter, but it could instead indicate that GGG are setting some rediculously high standard for themselves, when a game that looks as good, and plays as good as the best in the industry (if the trailers are anything to go by) still isn't considered good enough for us to actually play, even though any minor issues would surely be patched-out within a couple of weeks.

And the end result of this, is that you have lots of people who're giving-up on waiting for the game (we're not seeing that much here, but on other websites it's plain to see) and being lured to other things which have more solid release dates, and GGG are losing the respect of a community who've never even played their product, and the whole "PoE is delayed on PS4 again" thing is becoming a bit of a joke and a meme. That's before we even get to the fact that they lost all the advantage they gained by announcing the PS4 version while the internet was in full rage-mode over Diablo Immortal.

GGG have very little experience in the wider industry, even less when consoles are involved. It shows, and it means that it's only to be expected they're bound to stumble here and there, or struggle in ways that more experienced developers don't. We have to be patient, we have to be encouraging. We don't want to give them such a bad time over this that they become afraid of going anywhere near consoles again. But that's easy to say, and increasingly difficult to do.

But Sony, they won't change until the next console generation, at which point all the scorned PS4 players will likely jump-ship to the next XBox or Nintendo, and PS5 will be left trailing. It happens every new generation, and Sony have neglected it's players so much this generation that the cycle will unavoidably continue into the next.

I doubt it's in certification. That takes 2-3 weeks so we will most likely get the date shortly after it's been submitted.

Bex, Any chance that we get access to the public stash API for ps4 (or xbox)?

The problem is the little to no communication we get from GGG. I mean the most of us expect the next delay at this point.

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Pobatti wrote:

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bimbobaggings wrote:

It is Sony cert process. Not much GGG can do.

I believe this is the case, yes.

Im familiar with publishing games on some stores(excluding PSN to be honest) and my experience tells me that a 2.5 month delay is weird. I will not say that it's totally impossible, but weird... Would be really nice to hear any news from GGG regarding this issue.

any news.... data release?

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we won't be able to announce a firm release date until around two weeks before the launch

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Mid March

Mid March will probably nothing more, except one does not take it too exactly.


We must continue to be patient .... wait now already 3 months since the first announcements and the following shifts