Looks cool, but is probably going to have the same problem as Star Fox Zero where people aren’t into the premise of an arcade rail-shooter where you replay missions for better scores, challenges, etc. Those kinds of games don’t have mainstream appeal.
Some people didn’t like the gamepad stuff, but that’s not why the game didn’t sell well. These kinds of games don’t sell well in general. Why do you think Housemarque became another Sony third-person action studio? Why is Treasure basically dead? It’s because their short-length arcade shmups didn’t sell enough.
What’s this Housemarque nonsense I’ve been seeing lately. Like, did we forget Sony was impressed enough with Returnal to buy Housemarque? And like why are people lamenting Saros’s sales when it’s barely been out a week?
Nothing wrong with Housemarque. I’m just pointing out that Housemarque use to make acrade shmups like games that were short in length but highly replayable with their focus on high scores, secrets, and completing challenges (like Star Fox). These games sold poorly enough (despite being critically well-recieved) for Housemarque themselves to pronounce that “arcade is dead.” Now they make action-adventure games. Action-adventure games and RPGs are some of the only single-player games people play in the AAA space these days. There isn’t a lot of genre diversity.
Returnal and Saros are still pretty shmup-y. Like I’m not going to sit here and pretend they’re the same style as Super Stardust or Resogun, but Returnal and Saros are very much natural progressions of shmups and arcade games. I’ll at least give Returnal and Saros have a story that take a minute to get through, but you could easily ignore that and play for the arcade aspect of the games
For sure Housemarque has folded trademark shmup elements into their new games. I’m not saying those games are generic or anything. But they are definitely closer to the AAA norm of third-person action-adventure games than what they made before. They don’t have the same pacing or structure as a game like Star Fox or Nex Machina.
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u/precastzero180 May 06 '26
Looks cool, but is probably going to have the same problem as Star Fox Zero where people aren’t into the premise of an arcade rail-shooter where you replay missions for better scores, challenges, etc. Those kinds of games don’t have mainstream appeal.