Anyone hoping to play Ark: Survival Evolved on their PlayStation 4 might have a longer wait than expected, as the planned early access release is being blocked by Sony.
Developer Studio Wildcard revealed the news in a recent update over on the game’s official forums – apparently Sony don’t want the game on their console until it’s entirely finished, which means no early access copy.
Studio Wildcard Community Manager Jat Karunakaran wrote:
As for the PS4 Release of ARK: Survival Evolved, it is currently up to Sony. We’ve been informed that we can’t release the game on this platform until it has been finished. We would like nothing more than to make ARK available on PS4 as soon as possible, as we already have an awesome PS4 version of the game running internally. If you would like to see it sooner, please let Sony know, as it’s unfortunately not our decision.
The dinosaur flavoured survival game is currently a Steam Early Access release for the PC, and came to Xbox One as part of the Xbox Preview Program back in December 2015.
The release date for a full, finished version of Ark is still up in the air, although the holiday 2016 period seems to be the most likely at the moment.
It’s worth noting that Sony doesn’t have an Early Access system on the PlayStation 4, although zombie survival 7 Days to Die recently came to the console, despite being listed on Steam as an Early Access title.
Despite the PC version being decent enough, the console port of 7 Days to Die was buggy, broken, and rife with issues. It currently sits at 45 on Metacrtic (and our review found the game to be a complete mess).
Perhaps because of this, Sony has decided that sticking unfinished games on the PlayStation 4 isn’t a great move – though it would be unfair to judge Ark based on the performance of one other game.
Still, even if Sony decides Early Access is off the cards, we’re still guaranteed to get a finished version of Ark on the PS4 by 2017 at the latest.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.