The Five Sins of Sony’s Smash Bros.: The Failure of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale – PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale

La de PlayStation 3 It was a generation full of contrasts for the Sony console and its studios. She was the one who saw the birth of Uncharted o The Last of Uswhich consecrated Ratchet and made a place among the reference console shooters for brands like Killzone o Resistance, but they are also years of experimentation, failed experiments with which he was not as patient as he has been with other projects in the house. do you remember ModNation Racers As the LittleBigPlanet from kart video games? Or the attempt MAG for creating a massive shooter? Or the case of Warhawk y Heavenly Sword? PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royaleunfortunately, it belongs to the generation of broken toys of the now renowned PlayStation Studios.

If only the good intention of a study counted, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale it would have completely guaranteed his success before locals and strangers. Unfortunately, it was not so: PlayStation’s hero/villain crossover fighting game never quite got off the ground despite its unquestionable benefits. A decade has passed since the premiere of SuperBot Entertainment on PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, and a lot is the information that, since then, has been released about the project thanks to its director, Omar Kendall, and brilliant interviews and reports such as that of The Golden Boltwhich helps to make a more accurate x-ray of what could have been and was not… or what could be and they didn’t let him.

Nevertheless, there are sources what They speak of between one and three million units sold of the game and the indisputable talent of the studio, with very famous veterans of the fighting genre or its kind treatment of the DLC for players who already had the game speak well of the aforementioned good intentions of the team, which It does nothing more than confirm the bad leg that the title had. What were the sins of the baptized, not always in a friendly way, like the PlayStation Smash Bros.?

A presentation marked by hate

From the sensations experienced in the premiere of PlayStation 3 to its outcome goes more than a stretch. In between, the third generation PlayStation community itself and others were not too happy with some of the decisions that Sony made when it came to attracting some good ideas that were working on the Nintendo shore. We talk, of course, about PlayStation Move: the firm’s response to the revolutionary control of those in Kyoto. That from the PlayStation offices they wanted to create a Smash Bros. with its heroes and villains, more than arousing curiosity, it lit even more a fire that already existed on the network, flooding the official presentation video with dislikes and belittling any content that was shown in what is, surely, one of the worst first impressions with the user who had a commercial title in the past decade.

The debatable selection of PlayStation fighters

It didn’t help at all that the character selection wasn’t up to scratch. what followers (and detractors) expected from the software. Fruit of the inexperience of SuperBot Entertainment, the trickle of leaks was a constant during the months after presenting the title weeks before E3. The obvious Nathan Drake, Kratos, Jak, Sly Cooper or Ratchet were joined by small-time and short-lived protagonists such as Fat Princess, two versions of Cole MacGrath from InFamous o Nariko de Heavenly Sword. It was hard to miss that the first generation of PlayStation heroes were underrepresented. So much so that it was decided to put a circumstantial mascot that not many remembered as Polygon Man as the final boss of the game. What happened to Crash, Spyro, Cloud, Snake and company? Next point.

The non-collaboration of the third parties

In the territory of collaborations between companies, 2012 was not 2023. The important brands preferred not to give up their characters to take any minimal risk with their licenses in the hands of a third party. The schedule didn’t help SuperBot Entertainment either: there were talks with Square Enix to bring Lara Croft into the game, but the premiere of the reboot de Tomb Raider It was only a few months away from completion and the last thing its developers were interested in was for the public to remember the old Lara. About Cloud, there was no interest on the part of its creators to give it up. Activision, owner of Crash Bandicoot then, he asked for an unaffordable sum for the developers, and Toys for Bob did not make it easy to assign a Spyro focused on selling toys with Skylanders. Yes, there were companies that granted licenses: Konami granted the Raiden of Metal Gear Rising: RevengeanceCapcom the controversial Dante of DmC: Devil May Cry and Namco the rejuvenated Heihachi from Tekken Tag Tournament 2; None of the aforementioned is, by far, a key representative of the aforementioned franchiseswhich further angered the players.

The end of development: chaos

The crunch in video games It is not something that has existed for the last five years: it has always been there. And with PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale it was pretty unforgiving.. The base of the game was done, but things like more game modes, decent character endings, a very poor and outdated overall design for menus, and its sheer presentation and general feel that, in the small game field, fell by the wayside. things there was a lot to do and needed more care. The content was also somewhat lower than desired: 20 fighters of questionable decision seemed little to most users. Although criticism, in general, he did know how to see the benefits of the softwareelements that took their toll on the game could have been corrected with a little more work. It was not the case, and the coin was already in the air: tails came out.

The zero patience of PlayStation

Would some patience have saved the production? In less than a year, PlayStation turned off the tap and cut the DLC plan to SuperBot Entertainmentwhich was removed from development and control of the product’s online support was turned over to a small group of developers who they made the leap to Sony Santa Monica to see him die little by little. The title had very innovative elements in terms of DLC and very significant advantages that today are not even on the table: getting the game on PS3 or PSVita gave you access to the version you were missing, whether it was in its home or portable version; downloadable characters had advantages to download them for free if you had purchased the title. In the inkwell there were fighters who would have delighted the followers as Dart from The Legend of Dragoon or Abe from Oddworld.