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Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection coming to PS3 in July for $50
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Final Fantasy 8 getting PC re-release (in Japan)
More Game Gear titles headed to 3DS eShop
Uncharted 3 won't feature dedicated servers
by Andrew Yoon, Jul 12, 2011 10:15pm PDTVery 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)
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Uncharted 3 developer Naughty Dog explains why the company decided to stick with peer-to-peer networking for the upcoming sequel, instead of dedicated servers.
Uncharted 3 developer Naughty Dog explains why the company decided to stick with peer-to-peer networking for the upcoming sequel, instead of dedicated servers. : Shacknews
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That's like saying companies always make the correct decision, which isn't the case. There's so much that's subjective and until you get some experience running dedicated servers for a game and seeing the hurdles and costs first hand, it's easy to be a little worried about it.
The folks over at S2 Games provide dedicated servers for Heroes of Newerth, which (including it's huge beta) has been around for over 2 years now, and they show no signs of slowing down. They're also still running savage 2 servers - these aren't the old school quake dedicated servers either, these are centralized systems that are operated as a service.
It feels like someone at naughty dog used the pea-brain logic of "dedicated servers cost us money, and they're for existing customers who have already paid, so there's no way they can be profitable." Thing is, a GOOD online experience that performs well is going to do a lot for driving word-of-mouth recommendations toward your game - that alone more than pays for server costs.
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