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When you talk about survivors in today’s games industry, Housemarque may not be the first studio that comes to mind. However, it’s been around since 1995 and pumped out some pretty great arcade-style games over the years. It’s more recently known for Saros, which launched last April for PS5 to extensive acclaim, though initial sales haven’t exactly been explosive.
Brand director Mikael Haveri is optimistic, though he didn’t reveal any concrete figures. Speaking to The Game Business, he noted, “It’s funny, Returnal, when we shipped, it started gaining traction a bit later. A lot of the community got to unlock it a little bit more, and then that tends to trickle down, and people get more interested in it.”
Of course, studio head and co-founder Ilari Kuittinen admits that there’s still work to be done on Saros. “This is just the start of the discussion and conversation with the gaming community. If you have played Saros, you know that there are a lot of things that we can do and tweak and add. We hope that we can keep on doing that for a while.”
Which is interesting because the studio now has nearly 120 staff, compared to 40-50 in 2017, when it released Nex Machina. “It’s quite different jumping into this scale of doing one game at a time with this amount of people. That’s been a big change in the studio to learn how to make these bigger experiences, and how to organize that,” said Kuittinen. “We attract people who understand our design sensibilities and the things that we are trying to accomplish.”
For now, the studio is focused on Saros and “discussing with the community” on how it should move forward. But it’s also looking towards the future. “There are interesting opportunities we’d like to look at that might not be at the scale of Saros. There are so many things that we want to explore, and we will find out whether it’s possible or not.”
Of course, with all the reports about Xbox studios at risk, including Ninja Theory, Double Fine, Arkane, and Compulsion Games, it’s hard not to feel concerned about Housemarque. Alinea Analytics estimated that Saros sold about 406,000 copies, apparently generating $30 million in revenue. How long it will continue to receive support remains to be seen, especially if Sony wants the studio to move on to something less costly, but time will tell.
In the meantime, check out our review for Saros here. We rated it a nine out of ten, praising the combat, rogue-lite elements, presentation, and more.
