Last June, Sony finally gave fans the details that they were craving in a special Future of Gaming event where the PlayStation 5 was revealed along with a host of games including Horizon: Forbidden West, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Resident Evil Village. However, the event also gave fans their first look at previously unannounced titles like the car combat title, Destruction AllStars, which was originally targeting a release date alongside the PlayStation 5 console.
Following it's loud and energetic reveal, the game went silent, leaving many fans wondering what the game played like in advance of its impending release. About a month before the PS5 launch, Lucid Games made the announcement that Destruction AllStars was receiving a delay, leaving the PS5 launch window and now planned for a February 2021 launch. With the bad news came the good, that the title would now be included as a PlayStation Plus title, meaning it would be a free download for those who were subscribers instead of a full priced retail title.
As it turns out, the delay was actually a blessing in disguise for Lucid Games as director Colin Berry recently revealed why the delay happened in the first place. Considering Destruction AllStars is intended to be a competitive online multiplayer experience, so to ensure that there would be a large audience and the best chance to succeed, the decision was made to add the title to the PlayStation Plus service. With these decisions being made long in advance, the earliest month the game could launch would be February as Bugsnax and Maneater were already penciled in for December and January.
The added development time allowed Lucid to reevaluate the servers and hardware powering the game. As a free to play title, the studio now braced for an even larger launch day audience and worked to improve the back end to ensure a smooth experience. In addition, the studio polished the title, improved the onboarding process, and tackled some elements which were originally intended to be added through post-launch updates.
PlayStation Plus, as well as Game Pass, have proven to be a major boon for games that especially rely on multiplayer elements. The biggest example of this success story is Rocket League, a game about cars playing soccer that has gone on to be a massive success story when it launched in 2015. The title is now on a ton of platforms and has a massive following thanks to the exposure it first received as a free to play game on PS+ as well as streaming services like Twitch. Fall Guys, another game that launched as a free to play game through PlayStation Plus has seen similar success where 60 players battle it out over multiple rounds attempting to make it across various obstacle courses to be the last one standing.
Destruction AllStars is available now, exclusively for PS5.
Source: Game Informer