Naughty Dog Defends Uncharted 3 Online Pass

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Was anyone surprised when Sony and Naughty Dog announced that Uncharted 3 will support PSN Pass? I wasn’t, and I don’t think it’s a good thing that I’m expecting games to come with online pass these days. Hell, it didn’t surprise me to hear that Warner Bros. is sticking Batman: Arkham City with an online pass when Arkham City is a purely single player experience.

This expectation of online pass has turned into an acceptance for some people, with more than a handful actually sticking up for publishers that use online pass these days. Of course, if you don’t fall into that category of gamers, Naughty Dog has an explanation for you, with Justin Richmond sitting down with The Sixth Axis and giving us the “we need to pay for server space” excuse:

We give literally thousands of hours of content in our online stuff and on top of that we give you not just competitive, but an entire co-op experience as well. There’s basically a whole alternate history, alternate version story in our co-op, and in this game they’re actually all tied together. Part of the reason for the online pass is that when that stuff goes online, it isn’t free. We have to pay for servers and all this different stuff to maintain it, and so at some point, you know, games have to make money.

It is a business, and we just wanna be able to continue to provide that kind of content. If Sony ever comes to us and says ‘You’re not making enough money on this, you need to cut it’ or whatever, that’s not something that we want. We want to be able to maintain the level of quality of the product that we’re giving out. The other thing is that even if you do buy it used, it’s worth the price of that online pass just to get all that content, because there’s so much stuff.

Of course, the first two Uncharted games made a ton of money without any help from online pass, and Richmond is ignoring the fact that every spot on Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 3 servers has been paid for, whether or not that person bought new or used, but hey, details.

Regular readers of this blog already know how I feel about online pass, however, so now it’s your turn – head down to the comments section and tell us what you think. Does Richmond actually have a point, or is this just another excuse to get gamers to be okay with online pass?