SCEE Halts Development on Eight Days and The Getaway

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has announced today that it will halt production on Eight Days and The Getaway 3 (tentative title) which were both PS3 exclusives being developed at Sony’s London Studio.Sony has issued the following statement:

“It has been agreed that production of both Eight Days and The Getaway will cease immediately due to the redistribution of resources and budget. This decision was made following an internal review of all games and it was deemed that with the incredibly strong list of exclusive first party titles coming up both this year and in the near future, resource should be reallocated to enhance those projects closer to completion.

“Worldwide Studios has a reputation for innovative and entertaining games, with titles such as LittleBigPlanet, SingStar,Buzz, EyeToy and Eye of Judgement, and will continue to push the boundaries on all PlayStation platforms.”

The Getaway 3 was the third chapter in the Getaway saga and was supposedly to deliver a game based on a  next-gen graphics engine which would capitalize on the storage capacity of the Blu-Ray disc drive. 

Eight Days however, was much more anticipated due to the awesome demo of an exploding gas station shown at E3 2005 and the demo of a car being shot up at CES 200.  Eight Days was a crime epic set in the desert of Arizona and featured open environments that you can run in, with fully-modeled buildings that you can exploit when the action gets too heavy on the streets and outskirts.

Originally scheduled for an October 2008 release, the entire game took place in a time-line of eight days and during the course of the week and a day, you must achieve all of your goals. The biggest part of the game was the map system, which includes states that you must cross and was reportedly one of the largest game maps for any console to date. You would never have time to linger in one place too long, and once you visited a spot on the map you would never go back to it again. The neatest thing about Eight Days was the incorporation of the Google Maps system which would “tie into a real-life clock” which basically meant that whatever time of the day you were playing the game, the same time frame will be occurring in-game as well.

Hopefully these games will not be canceled indefinitely, especially Eight Days – but as soon as any news pops up regarding either one, we will be sure to let you know.

Thanks: StrategyInformer