The launch of Titan Studios’ PSN game Fat Princess seemed to have gone well but for one problem: the game’s apparently near unplayable over PSN thanks to crippling lag.
Fat Princess launched last week to mostly positive response, but not everything went as expected. As many fans have reported, the game seems to have some crucial flaws in the online multiplayer department: connections to games regularly fail, not to mention that playing online is sometimes subject to fun-killing lag. And nobody likes lag.
Titan Studios is more than aware of the problems, though it seems like they should have seen them coming. As the studio explained in a blog post, the lag issues are caused by the game’s matchmaking system, which picks servers based on “a number of criteria.” Apparently those criteria aren’t nearly stringent enough, because the game happens to sometimes land you on a server with a high ping, leaving you with nothing to do but try another server. Titan does have a fix for the problem already in testing, one that will match you with low ping servers.
The other problem – dropped connections – already has a fix up and running on Titan’s machines, and they say it makes a whole world of difference. The studio’s trying to get the patch through Sony’s testing process, so hopefully we’ll see it sooner rather than later.
Both problems seem like they should have never happened, but Titan admits that they never saw them coming. “Fat Princess went through comprehensive testing with Sony in the US and Europe, and a beta, but these issues did not manifest until the game went live at scale,” the studio wrote. “Rest assured, we’re working on it, and think we have it largely addressed.”
Published: Aug 3, 2009 09:38 pm