Studio Wildcard has announced that the Hunger Games-like arena title, ARK: Survival of the Fittest, will be delayed on PS4 as the studio focuses on ARK: Survival Evolved.
ARK: Survival of the Fittest is an offspring to Studio Wildcard’s widely successful survival sim, ARK: Survival Evolved. Described as “The Hunger Games with dinosaurs” by fans, Survival of the Fittest lets 72 players to compete against each other, making challenges for them to utilize the environment and the prehistoric beasts surrounding them to prove the last “Tribe” standing.
By promising the game’s “intense competition” and “epic wars,” most of the gamers on Sony’s machines were normally excited when ARK: Survival of the Fittest got announced for PS4. Sadly, regardless of Survival of the Fittest being given a July 19 release date on PS4 (the PC version is already available), Studio Wildcard has made it public that the console port is postponed.
An update to the early PS4 announcement post explains that the studio is putting the PS4 version of ARK: Survival of the Fittest on hold in order to concentrate on preparing ARK: Survival Evolved for PS4 release and that even though Survival of the Fittest won’t arrive on the console this month, Studio Wildcard is making progress on an earlier release of ARK: Survival Evolved.
The fact that Studio Wildcard switched focus 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. Meanwhile, the developer explained that it’s adding lots of new features to the full release of Survival Evolved, including over 100 dinosaurs instead of 70, split-screen, local multiplayer and various other upcoming features.
By making Survival Evolved a paid game and Survival of the Fittest free to play, the developer may also see it as good business sense to release a premium product that will surely make money from instead of launching a product that is possibly a huge risk.