Why Eight Days was Cancelled by Sony

When Eight Days was shown as a tech demo for the Playstation 3 before the system launched, many were impressed with its promising premise. After years of development, however, Sony decided to cancel their project. When footage and screenshots were leaked recently, many fans were upset that Sony cancelled Eight Days. Here are a few reasons why Sony did not want to continue developing their promising title.

New Intellectual Property
Eight Days is a new intellectual property from Sony. Unlike the established franchises, these titles are more risky due to not knowing how the market will react. While Sony has seen big success with Resistance and Uncharted, the publisher also suffered from the underwhelming performance of Lair. For Sony, Eight Days seems like it was leaning towards the Lair-side of the equation. Thus, they ended up canceling that particular Playstation 3 game.

Similar Title
Speaking of Uncharted, Eight Days looks eerily similar to the hit Playstation 3 series. The cancelled title is a third-person shooter that uses a cover-based mechanic. Having two similar games can cut in on potential sales. Sony already has a similar case with the Resistance and Killzone series. Furthermore, the Uncharted series is quickly growing as one of the biggest franchises on the Playstation 3. Because of these reasons, Sony ended up canceling Eight Days because they already have a similar and more popular product on the market.

Developer's History
Of course, Sony could have continued to let the developer work on Eight Days. However, Sony Computer Entertainment London Studios isn't exactly known for critically-acclaimed titles. Aside from The Getaway, the only recognizable games that were developed by the team are the SingStar series. Even then, these games are barely known by the hardcore gamers. With very little history and reputation, Sony did not trust Sony Computer Entertainment London Studios with Eight Days. As a result, the game was cancelled.

Limited Resources
Sony Computer Entertainment London Studios proved that they are more effective with the casual side of gaming throughout the years. Part of the reason Eight Days was cancelled was due to giving more resources to the development of Playstation Home and EyePet. The Playstation Home took forever to be released and was a far more important project to Sony than Eight Days. Furthermore, the general public has shown far more interests in EyePet. Eight Days just ended up being the odd product out.

Still, many in the Playstation 3 community would like to see the cancelled game come out. Perhaps the best case scenario is for Sony to release Eight Days in its unfinished form on the Playstation Network. This way, they could also earn money back for the investment they put in.