Driveclub was delayed due to a 'huge technical issue,' says Yoshida

The decision to delay Evolution Studios' racing game Driveclub from the PlayStation 4 launch window into 2014 was due to a large-scale technical issue, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida told Eurogamer.

Driveclub was announced alongside the PS4 console reveal in Feb 2013, with Sony touting the social-focused car title as a launch game. That October, with one month to go before the PS4's Nov. 15 launch, the game was delayed into early 2014.

This past April, Sony announced that Driveclub had been delayed again, and instead of launching in "early 2014" the game will hit PS4 on Oct. 7. At the time, Evolution Studios' game director Paul Rustchynsky said the delay was due to problems with "primarily just one feature" — the game's dynamic menu system.

"We're excited with what Driveclub is now," Yoshida told Eurogamer during Gamescom. "Last year we were hoping to get it done, but there was a huge technical issue. So the team had to go back and re-engineer some parts of the game. That's the reason it took so long. It's almost a whole year, because the team went back to the drawing board in some of the key aspects of the game.

"So, now what we have is a game the team has always imagined," Yoshida added. "I personally checked out other racing games at E3 and personally I was pretty happy. It's a different kind of game compared to the other games you mentioned. I didn't see any direct competition, from my perspective. I don't know. People will tell us when it comes out."

Driveclub will launch this fall alongside a handful of other racing games, including Forza Horizon 2 on Sept. 30, Ubisoft's The Crew on Nov. 11 and Project Cars sometime that same month.