Uncharted 3 won't feature dedicated servers

Very few console games offer dedicated servers for online multiplayer. Uncharted 3 developer Naughty Dog went on Twitter to explain why the company decided to stick with peer-to-peer networking for the upcoming sequel, which is currently in the middle of an extensive public beta test.

"We're not going to have dedicated servers," a representative commented. "The cost delta between dedicated & non-dedicated is huge long term. Eventually someone will say it costs too great and shut them down." Support for online games from companies like EA are shut down on a regular basis. "Despite some people's perception, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these older games up and running," an EA rep commented last year.

Using P2P networking instead of dedicated servers should guarantee a long lifespan for Uncharted 3's online community. "My personal hope is that by keeping costs down and a strong enough community, we could be in a position to consider 4+ yrs of uptime," Naughty Dog added. However, while the sentiment makes sense, Sony has a track record of keeping games online for quite some time. For example, one of the earliest PlayStation Network games, Warhawk, uses dedicated servers--and has been online for nearly four years.

(via CVG)