Next Wednesday’s new Ratchet & Clank game is a re-imagining of the first game in the series, but it’s also a tie-in with an animated movie that doesn’t hit US theatres until April 29, and Australian theatres until July 28. Sony disabled sharing late game movie cinematics just in the nick of time.
Sony deployed patch 1.02 to Ratchet & Clank at around 12pm AEDT yesterday (10pm Eastern time), a couple of hours before the game went on sale in the US. Most of the in-game cinematics are still fair game, with only a few that come towards the end giving players the old disabled streaming content message.
Keep in mind that many streamers use capture cards instead of PS4 streaming to share their gameplay with the world, so if you’re keen on seeing an unsullied animated feature later this year, best avoid streams altogether. Maybe unplug the internet too.
Oh, and don’t play Ratchet & Clank until July either. It’s quite good, but you can resist.
Comments
3 responses to “Last Minute Ratchet & Clank Patch Stops Streamers From Spoiling The Movie”
The game’s release has been a crazy, crazy affair for PAL territories. France gets it on the 15th, while the rest of the EU territories (including Australia) get it on the 20th with the UK coming lucky last on the 22nd. All because they want the game to release just before the movie is released in those territories. (hence France being early since the movie is out early) This is probably the weirdest marketing thing I’ve ever seen.
How dumb. Just release the movie at the same time.
The reason they don’t is because hitting certain audiences first actually boosts sales if the movies any good (and if it’s not, then it doesn’t matter who gets it first, does it?). Essentially, while some people will go to the movie before hearing any reviews about it, a lot of people will wait for reviews to come in before seeing it. Furthermore, it turns out that Americans (often the biggest target audience for movies) tend to value reviews from overseas more than American reviews, while people outside of the US don’t really get affected by whether a review is from the US or not.
So the idea is: Release in France, get good french reviews to get the other non-US countries excited and make a bigger box office there. Those bigger openings means more reviews from those countries, which means more reviews. These reviews make the Americans super excited so they all go see it.
Essentially it’s min/maxing for movie profits. By doing strategic releases, and getting the right countries excited in the right order, they can up how many people see the movie
I don’t understand why the article suggests not playing till July?
Also – why are all my comments being moderated now?
Yeah I don’t understand that either.
mine has never stopped being moderated