With Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End’s launch fast approaching, gamers have been latching on to and trying to feed on whatever morsels of info that Naughty Dog is feeding the community. During a recent live-stream for Uncharted 4, Naughty Dog’s Robert Cogburn acknowledged that the game won’t have any split-screen features when it launches next week on May 10th.
Gamespot apparently had the time and leisure to sit down and watch the entire live-stream when they should have been trying to find ways to click-bait the heck out of that article they did about Megan Fox playing video games. Anyway, they note that Cogburn mentioned that Naughty Dog ran into “hurdles and obstacles” when attempting to implement split-screen into the game.
Some of the commenters at the bottom of the article took a more conspiratorial approach to Naughty Dog’s decision, stating that perhaps they removed split-screen so that they could get more sales from the game, forcing people who want to play the co-op mode to each buy their own copy of Uncharted 4 instead of sharing a single copy. It’s not a bad theory, and it fits in line perfectly with Cogburn’s admission that they plan on adding in split-screen play even if it takes them a long while – their main obstacle was trying to meet the May 10th deadline, though.
It’s not unreasonable to think that they get a bunch of sales day-one from people who might have otherwise only bought a single copy because the game sports split-screen play, but instead buy a couple of copies in order to play the multiplayer instead. The omission of a feature in a $60 game turns into a $120 scheme.
Anyway, there’s no way to prove that it’s actually a plan afoot at the studios of Naughty Dog. We’ll likely find out if the split-screen talk from Cogburn was just lip-service or if they plan on delivering the feature as a form of fan-service. You can expect the co-op mode to debut this autumn in Uncharted 4, along with various other updates and features as part of a year-long roadmap of content that Naughty Dog has planned for the game, which includes a single-player DLC expansion.
According to the Gamespot article, Naughty Dog also wants to include a spectator mode for the multiplayer, along with considering the addition of a “Classic” mode that hearkens back to the days of Uncharted 2.
You can look for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End to launch exclusively on the PlayStation 4 starting May 10th.
