Studio Wildcard announces that ARK: Survival of the Fittest, aHunger Games-like arena title, has been delayed on PS4 as the studio works on ARK: Survival Evolved.
ARK: Survival of the Fittest is a spin-off to Studio Wildcard’s massively successful survival sim, ARK: Survival Evolved. Described by fans as ‘The Hunger Games with dinosaurs,’ Survival of the Fittest pits up to 72 players against each other, challenging them to utilise the environment and the prehistoric beasts around them to become the last ‘Tribe’ standing. With the game promising “intense competition” and “epic wars,” many gamers on Sony’s machine were naturally excited when ARK: Survival of the Fittest was announced for PS4.
Unfortunately, despite Survival of the Fittest being given a July 19 release date on PS4 (the title is already available on PC), Studio Wildcard has now announced that the console port is “on hold.” In an update to the initial PS4 announcement post, the studio explains that it is “putting the PS4 version of ARK: Survival of the Fittest on hold in order to focus on preparing ARK: Survival Evolved for PS4 release” and that although Survival of the Fittest won’t be released on the console this month, Studio Wildcard is “working towards an earlier release of ARK: Survival Evolved.”
The fact that Studio Wildcard is looking to prioritize the main game over the PS4 release of Survival of the Fittest comes as little surprise as the developer recently delayed ARK: Survival Evolved to holiday 2016. At the time, the developer explained that it is adding plenty more features to the full release of Survival Evolved, including over 100 dinosaurs instead of 70, local multiplayer, split-screen and “numerous other upcoming features.”
With Survival Evolved being paid-for and Survival of the Fittest being free to play, the developer may also see it as good business sense to release the premium product it will surely make money from before it launches the product that is (potentially) a huge risk.
This is unlikely to make PS4 players feel any less disappointed, though. ARK: Survival Evolved launched on Xbox One via its version of early access last year, even proving more popular than the Steam release. Although the version that Xbox One players have had access to is very much still in development, PS4 players have had no access to the ARK universe at all so it’s understandable that they may feel left out of the dinosaur-taming/environment survival party. At this stage, it’s unclear how or if Studio Wildcard plans to make it up to PS4 players.
