Back in 1999 Playstation owners were introduced to the character John Turner in a little video game called Driver. Of course it seems like more people remember the training part as it has gone down as the hardest tutorial in video game history with many giving up on the game before they even got to play anything. The franchise itself has had its share of problems ranging from this, to the infamous Driv3rgate scandal in which Atari gave preview copies to magazine publishers in exchange for very positive reviews despite ended up being broken. For the purpose of this article though, we are going to go past that and look at the game known as Driver 5.
Driver 5 was a racing game that was scheduled to start development almost immediately after the release of Driver 4, which many know as Driver: Parallel Lines. The game was being developed by Sumo Digital, the company who would go on to develop Crackdown 3, Forza Horizon 2, and LittleBigPlanet 3. The publishers would be Ubisoft and would’ve been released on Wii, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360 in early 2011.
Driver 5 was ultimately revealed during a Ubisoft financial forecast in January 2010 as they had plans to release an untitled fifth entry in the driver series. The game entered pre-production around this time and Sumo Digital was in good standing with the company after releasing a Driver game on PSP called Driver ‘76. While not much is known about the game, it would’ve featured destructible environments as seen in some concept art. This concept would later be used by Sumo Digital in Sonic & All Stars Racing: Transformed.
So what exactly happened to Driver 5? Well sadly the game never left the pre-production phase of development and was ultimately cancelled after Ubisoft decided to not partner up with Sumo Digital. Instead, the game was given to Ubisoft Reflections and would ultimately become Driver: San Francisco.
