Whatever the case, there's Wipeout HD -- sitting next to other downloadable games on the PlayStation store and priced to move. After enjoying the game for the last week, GamePro sought answers. Why, Sony? Why!!??
Here's why, according to director Tony Buckley of Studio Liverpool.
GamePro: Why sell Wipeout HD for $20 when other traditional PSN games like Warhawk and GT5 Prologue sell for $40?
Tony Buckley: We can't comment on the pricing of other PSN titles (each territory's Marketing Dept determines pricing), but with regards to Wipeout HD, we feel it's a great value. For the first time, the line between downloadable game and full-price offering has been blurred, which is something we are very proud of.
Was a retail release ever considered?
Wipeout HD was a PSN-exclusive title from the very beginning, and we remained entirely focused on that throughout our development phase. We were very much one of the pioneers of downloadable content when we released Wipeout PURE for the PSP at launch, and it felt like a logical next step to take the Wipeout series entirely digital with this PS3 installment.
Being a PSN-exclusive title also guarantees us that everyone who buys the game is able to play Online, and we regard the online feature of Wipeout HD as one of the best and most important features of the game.
The game looks great in 1080p at 60 frames per second. How did you accomplish this?
Our art assets were produced with high performance in mind, we put a lot of work into optimizing the Wipeout HD engine for the PS3's cell processors, and our rendering team are ninja-hot.
How was it decided to rework older tracks as opposed to inventing new ones?
Due to the huge amount of time and resource required to produce tracks to the 1080p standard that we set ourselves with Wipeout HD, we decided to use a selection of tracks from our previous PSP games, Pure and Pulse. This allowed us to deliver far mores tracks in the game than we could have if we had created brand new tracks.
The Sixaxis controls left something to be desired, especially at higher speeds. Did your team feel the same way? If so, what do you think went wrong?
Nothing went wrong with the implementation of the Sixaxis control, controlling an AG ship using the Sixaxis controller will be new to people and we knew it may take some getting use to. Taking this into account we took the decision early on to make it a selectable option. This way those players that wanted to play the traditional way can do, whereas those that want to put some time into mastering the Sixaxis have that option readily available.
Some players with large friend lists have been experiencing random game crashes. Are you aware of the issue? If so, are you working on a patch to correct it?
We are aware of the friends list issue and are currently working on a fix for the problem. We monitor on a daily basis the many forums that have been dedicated to Wipeout HD since it's launch to ensure that if people are experiencing and reporting issues with the game, we can look in to addressing them as quickly as possible.
What can Wipeout fans expect in the future?
Future DLC is planned for Wipeout HD and full details will be announced at a later date.
Anything else you'd like to add?
The Wipeout team here in Studio Liverpool are extremely pleased with how Wipeout HD has come together over the last 18 months, both in terms of it's visual fidelity and the game play experience it provides. Although crafted from earlier PSP games this title was approached as if it was a full Blu-ray release and hopefully this will be appreciated by those who have or intend to purchase the game from the PlayStation Store.