A rough road lies ahead for Crackdown 3 as Microsoft has confirmed that the game won’t be playable with friends at launch and that players will have to wait for a post-launch update for this to be fixed.
The long-awaited Xbox exclusive has had a difficult development process, enduring lots of delays with some people even expecting it to be canceled all together. With the game launching in just a couple of days, players excited for the game’s multiplayer mode and especially to play it with friends, will find this to be a huge disappointment. It is the norm in gaming today that multiplayer games and modes should allow friends to play with one another at launch, and anything short of that feels like an incomplete product. Gamespot reached out to Microsoft about the lack of the ability to play with friends at launch and a spokesperson for them got back to Gamespot stating:
“Players will soon be able to take full advantage of the Xbox platform’s Party features so they can experience the fully destructible environments in Crackdown 3 Wrecking Zone with friends. We are always looking for ways to improve our fans’ experience, and party functionality will be enabled with an upcoming title update along with our soon to be announced post-launch content.”
. We are always looking for ways to improve our fans’ experience, and party functionality will be enabled with an upcoming title update along with our soon to be announced post-launch content.”
Sadly, this will probably have a huge effect on how many people play Crackdown 3 at launch since many will want to play with their friends. Hopefully the developers of Crackdown 3 are able to deliver the patch that enables party play within the first week of launch.
However, it is also worth noting that Microsoft pushed up the release date of Crackdown 3, having it launch a week earlier than its previous release date of February 22nd. Crackdown 3 and other games were pushed forward by a week in an effort to stand out from the crowd of games that were supposed to come out on the 22nd. Without party play being in Crackdown 3 on day one, the developer should have kept the release date on the 22nd or even delayed it by a week or two to ensure that it would be ready and in the game at launch.
The whole development of Crackdown 3 and all of its problems should hopefully serve as a learning experience for Microsoft and that future first party games don’t go through as many delays and disappoint fan expectations.
Crackdown 3 comes out on February 15th and will be exclusive to Xbox One and PC. Be sure to stick around with Bring Your Own Games for our review of the game once it comes out as well as other news for all things gaming.
Bring Your Own Games 
Leave a comment