By all accounts, Harmony has landed with a heady thud.
The team-based shooter is considered one of a scant few new first-party PlayStation video games that is popping out this 12 months. Sony launched it on each PS5 and PC on August 23. The corporate does not sometimes reveal detailed participant numbers for its personal platforms. Nonetheless, Steam does. The numbers there will not be fairly.
A Steam participant rely is not fully reflective of a recreation’s success, Nonetheless, it’s a key knowledge level from which we will extrapolate some assumptions. In its first weekend, Harmony failed to interrupt 700 concurrent gamers on Steam. That is a dismal determine for a fairly high-profile launch, particularly one from a significant writer.
For perspective, Galaxy Burger, an indie cooking sim I would by no means heard of that got here out on the identical day, had greater than 4 occasions the variety of concurrent gamers on Steam (469) as Harmony (104) at one level on Wednesday. So far as a comparability for a supposed blockbuster from this 12 months goes, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League peaked at greater than 13,400 simultaneous gamers on Steam. That co-op recreation was a infamous flop that led to a $200 million loss for Warner Bros. Discovery.
As well as, Harmony has amassed 444 evaluations on Steam on the time of writing. Some analysts estimate that every Steam overview interprets to between 30 and 50 gross sales. On the higher finish of the dimensions, that might put Harmony‘s quantity of gross sales on Steam at round 22,000.
We do not have a robust thought of the gross sales numbers on PlayStation simply but, however as a thought train, for example 3 times as many individuals have purchased Harmony on PS5 to this point. At 40 bucks a pop and a speculative complete of 88,000 models bought, that might put Harmony‘s gross income at round $3.5 million (that is earlier than the reduce Valve takes of Steam purchases). That will not remotely come near masking the event and advertising prices for a recreation that took Firewalk Studios (which Sony purchased final 12 months) eight years to make. So yeah, Harmony has all of the indicators of being a catastrophe.
There are a bunch of the explanation why Harmony simply hasn’t grabbed individuals’s consideration. I performed a couple of rounds through the open beta and thought it was so-so. The fight is okay and among the core concepts — reminiscent of a cool, lore-filled map — are fascinating, but it surely felt like there was not sufficient novelty.
The primary wave of characters is bland, which isn’t ultimate for a hero shooter when Apex Legends and Overwatch 2 (vastly extra common rival titles which are free-to-play) every have dozens of distinct, participating personalities for followers to attach with. The affect of Guardians of the Galaxy is keenly felt, for higher or worse, which makes it appear much more like Firewalk and Sony are chasing after traits that have been common in 2016.
The most important mistake of all seems to be the worth level. With gamers capable of entry so many comparable video games with out paying a penny, having to shell out $40 for Harmony was evidently not an attractive proposition for the overwhelming majority of PS5 and PC house owners.
It isn’t fully unattainable that we’ll see a exceptional No Man’s Sky-model turnaround. However the stage seems set for Harmony to swiftly hit PlayStation Plus to juice up the participant base, then going free-to-play at a later date similar to many different live-service video games earlier than it.
And but, Harmony appears to solely be the one actual bitter notice on what’s truly been a quietly sturdy 12 months for PlayStation total to this point.
The Sony-published Helldivers 2 is the second-best promoting recreation within the US to this point this 12 months, in response to trade analysts at Circana. Solely School Soccer 25 has bought extra copies within the nation. Actually, Helldivers 2 is the fastest-selling recreation Sony has ever put out, with greater than 12 million copies bought in its first 12 weeks.
Opting to launch the sport on PS5 and PC concurrently paid off, as a lot of the preliminary wave of gross sales got here by way of Steam, per analysts. Nonetheless, the Steam participant rely has dropped off considerably in latest months, partly due to a controversial account-linking requirement.
Stellar Blade, one other Sony-published recreation from a third-party studio, obtained a usually optimistic response from critics and it’s doing nicely commercially too. Developer Shift Up estimated that gross sales topped 1 million models inside the first two months and stated in June {that a} PC port was into account consequently.
Sony’s technique of bringing its main exclusives to PC within the years following their PlayStation debut has been paying off over the previous few years. It is launched two considerably older video games on Steam this 12 months within the type of Horizon Forbidden West and Ghost of Tsushima. Each are glorious, devoted ports that carry out nicely on my high-end PC in addition to my Steam Deck. They have been profitable sales-wise too, with the previous cracking the record of the highest 10 best-selling video games within the US in its first week. Ghost topped the general US recreation gross sales charts for Might total, per Circana, simply after Stellar Blade did the identical factor in April.
Sony has at the least two extra blockbuster PC ports on the best way this 12 months. God of Warfare: Ragnarök will hit that platform on September 19. The earlier recreation bought greater than 2.5 million models on PC as of final February, per the main Insomniac leak, so the sequel appears primed to do nicely too. The Till Daybreak remake is coming to PC and PS5 simply a few weeks later.
After which there’s the small matter of The Final of Us Half 2 Remastered, which arrived on PS5 earlier this 12 months with an ideal new roguelike mode included. There is no PC launch date but, however TLOU Day (Naughty Canine’s annual celebration of the sequence on September 26) is quick approaching. That looks like a major alternative for an announcement forward of the second season of the HBO adaptation debuting in 2025.
A cautious method appears sensible for Half 2. Sony will wish to be certain that the PC port has nothing just like the sorts of technical points Half 1 had when it arrived on that platform, so giving builders as a lot time as they want for polish is vital.
Sony even has a pair extra first-party video games lined up for the final chunk of the 12 months. It won’t have to attend lengthy to scrub off the stink of Harmony because the extremely anticipated and fully lovable platformer Astro Bot lands on PS5 on September 6. Lego Horizon Adventures — a extra family-friendly tackle the Horizon sequence — is headed to PS5, PC and Nintendo Swap in a notable multi-platform debut this vacation season.
After which there’s the {hardware} facet of the equation. Within the first half of the calendar 12 months, Sony bought just below 7 million PS5s. That’s down from 9.3 million over the identical interval in 2023, however a dip’s to be anticipated at this level within the system’s life cycle.
How the PS5 stacks up in opposition to the competitors tells a much bigger story. Though Microsoft has lengthy saved quiet about what number of Xboxes it is promoting, earlier this 12 months some analysts pegged the ratio of PS5 to Xbox Sequence X/S gross sales at greater than 5 to 1. Yeesh. Given Sony’s bigger set up base, it’s little marvel why Microsoft is more and more desperate to deliver its first-party video games to PlayStation.
In the meantime, at first look, the PlayStation Portal appeared like an edge-case peripheral for the diehards. All it does is allow you to play video games from your individual PS5 remotely with out even supporting Sony’s cloud gaming service.
Nonetheless, the Portal has confirmed to be a stunning hit. Sony stated the gadget, which was typically bought out for months, exceeded its expectations. It is the best-selling video games accent to this point this 12 months by greenback quantity, in response to Circana. And rumors are swirling that Sony is “paying very shut consideration to the present handheld market,” maybe suggesting that the corporate is lastly able to work on a correct Vita/PSP successor. One can hope.
Even the beleaguered PS VR2 appears to have had an upturn in fortunes after a latest sale and the discharge of a dongle that lets house owners use it to play digital actuality video games on PC. In line with one report, the cheaper price led to a sudden 2,350 p.c spike in gross sales. Sony could have even bought extra models in a single day (July 28) than it did within the earlier seven months total, in response to The Shortcut. Experiences counsel that PS VR2 gross sales have been disappointing for Sony, however such a pointy improve (or something near it) can be astonishing. Together with the low cost, the additional utility of with the ability to use the headset for PC gaming absolutely helped, because the precise PS VR2 video games library stays pretty small.
There’s one different piece of {hardware} that might make 2024 much more of a barnburner for Sony: the extensively rumored PS5 Professional. For months, leaks have been suggesting {that a} mid-generation refresh is coming this vacation season. Rumors level to the PS5 Professional with the ability to ship increased speeds, sooner recreation rendering, improved graphics, higher ray-tracing efficiency and an 8K efficiency mode. Provided that Microsoft’s new Xbox variants both add inside storage, change the field’s coloration or take away a disc drive, the PS5 Professional could appear to be an excellent tastier possibility for current-gen holdouts.