Fans are up in arms over a recent announcement by Sega that planned updates for the console versions of Aliens vs. Predator that would have brought some much-needed multiplayer fixes to the game have been canceled.
Rebellion’s Aliens vs. Predator hasn’t exactly been burning up the charts since it was released in February, with lackluster Metacritic scores of 64, 65 and 68 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. That may be why Sega appears to be abandoning ship on the game; barely a week after the release of the Bughunt Map Pack DLC, a message posted by a Sega forum administrator claims that plans for future updates to the console versions of the game have been killed.
“I’ve just received a mail this AM regarding patches for the console versions of AVP and I regret to inform everyone that these have sadly been scrapped,” the admin, using the name “Clumsyorchid,” wrote. “I had previously made a claim that these were coming and at the time, this was very much on the table. For the console community, I apologize, as I know there are many features and updates that you’d like to see. I’ll keep fighting internally for this to happen, but until I hear otherwise, there will not be a console patch for either Xbox or PS3.”
The reaction, as you might expect, hasn’t been entirely positive. The console versions are apparently plagued by numerous multiplayer issues, including excessively long wait times to access ranked matches, the need to play ranked games in order to level up and unlock content, incorrectly applied XP and problems with team balancing.
Making matters worse in the eyes of some is the fact that the PC version of the game has already been patched to a vastly improved state and similar fixes for consoles had been promised. Furthermore, Clumsyorchid said in a later post that only the console updates were confirmed as killed, suggesting that support for the PC version may continue. “I have heard nothing on PC patches and would not assume there will be any changes unless stated otherwise,” he wrote.
Shortly after the launch of Aliens vs. Predator, Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley said he was “delighted” with the game’s performance on the U.K. sales charts and claimed to be in discussions with Sega about a sequel. I think it’s safe to say at this point that the likelihood of a follow-up has been reduced somewhat.
