Eight Days (codenamed HEIST) was to be a PlayStation 3 game from Sony’s London Studio. It was shown for the first time at Sony’s E3 2006 press conference. It was a hybrid of a third-person shooter and driving action that shared similarities with the PlayStation Portable game, Pursuit Force. The title was cancelled on 4 June 2008.
Certain parts of the sequence shown at E3 included a full heads up display, and crosshair, implying true interactive in-game footage. However, opinions were divided about the sequence, some suspected it to be pre-rendered, while others believed it was non-interactive using the game engine which would mean while it was indeed the PlayStation 3 hardware doing the rendering, it may or may not have been indicative of the final gameplay experience. [Info from Wikipedia]
Eight Days was to be set in eight days over eight states across the United States of America, the largest game map to date, with a real internal clock that would change from day to night as the game progressed. In the game you could choose between two players one that was “good” and the other “bad”. The “bad” character story line would have him/her get revenge on a mob syndicate, the other story line would follow the “good” character who was a detective who was coincidentally looking for the same mob syndicate who had kidnapped his son. The two characters would eventually cross paths and work together.
On June 4, 2008 Sony Computer Entertainment released a statement on the cancellation: “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”. Two weeks after the cancellation of Eight Days, President of Sony Computer Entertainment Shuhei Yoshida stated that the lack of an Online mode in Eight Days was “part of the consideration” to cancel the game. He also stated that the cancellation of Eight Days was not because it was not failing in production, but becauseSony is increasingly moving towards online-supported games and Eight Days did not fit that overall strategy. A weird explanation for sure.
Thanks to Max Max, Iven and Yoshida for their contributions!
Images:
E3 trailer and pre-visualisation
Gameplay footage:
Tech demos: