Nigel Kershaw, lead designer on MotorStorm, has said that the reason the Japanese version of the game doesn't have online play was simply because the Japanese market wasn't "as bothered about online."

The US and European version of Sony's mud-curdling racer shipped with full online play, while the first game out for the doors, the Japanese version, went solo. Many thought the online mode may have been dumped in order to get the game out of the door in time for the Japanese launch.

Not so Kershaw said in a recent interview: "Well, the European and American versions have online. The Japanese version does not, they weren't as bothered about online. We also tweaked a lot of things under the hood. Nothing you'd probably notice - we played around with some of the numbers and some of the graphics - but the main thing we did was add online play."

There are no plans to add online to the Japanese version either. We've just plowed our way through the entire single player game and now look set to take the online world by storm. Except Japan, by the looks of it.

April 10, 2007