PS4's Prehistoric Escapade Primal Carnage: Genesis Buried for Now

Lukewarm Media’s episodic Walking with Dinosaurs-esque adventure Primal Carnage: Genesis made a big roar at last year’s Game Developers Conference, as the episodic escapade was one of the first indie titles announced for the PlayStation 4. Revealed around about a month after the machine itself, the company claimed that it was aiming to release the first instalment in the pre-historic affair alongside the next-gen system in November.

However, it’s been about a year since we last heard a snuffle from the studio, so we decided to reach out in an attempt to find out what’s going on. “Primal Carnage: Genesis isn't out of the picture entirely, but it has taken a bit of a back seat to the work that our team’s been doing to greatly improve the existing game,” founder Aaron Pollack told us in an email. The original Primal Carnage, which is a PC-based shooter, is set to receive a gigantic patch in the coming months.

Pollack continued that the firm may have news on its first console foray once it’s got through some of the “immediate work” on the update to its previous game, but we couldn’t help but notice that the release has been removed from the developer’s website. Moreover, it seems like the studio has splintered since last year’s announcement, with one Reddit poster pointing out that fellow founder Ashton Andersen has left the outfit.

In fact, we get the feeling that the split wasn’t overly amicable. “My team and I are no longer with Lukewarm Media,” he tweeted earlier in the year. “We left to start a new studio and project due to a bad partnership.” That developer is named Virtual Basement, but outside of the impressive logo on its website, there’s no word on what it’s actually working on. With regards to the Primal Carnage property, Andersen noted that the rights are “complicated”.

Still, during our correspondence, Pollack seemed confident that the title is still very much on the agenda, but given Lukewarm Media’s commitments to the PC version of Primal Carnage, and the fact that the developer has essentially broken up over the past few months, we can’t imagine that it’ll be releasing anytime soon. We're hopeful, however, that it will stomp onto the PS4 eventually, as there simply aren't enough dinosaur titles around these days.