Housemarque’s marketing director Mikael Haveri has shared an interesting tidbit of information with Axios Gaming. Apparently, the studio found out that Sony Interactive Entertainment set Returnal‘s price at $70 “around the same time as the general public.”
While Returnal received positive reviews from fans and critics alike, its price tag has often been debated and has come under scrutiny. While digital data has yet to be released, Returnal‘s physical sales in the UK didn’t exactly impress. According to Games Industry, it debuted a lot lower than other PlayStation exclusives, making many wonder if its price hindered sales.
According to Haveri, at the time Sony made the announcement, Housemarque was already in the process of justifying a higher price than what its previous titles sold at.
Elsewhere in the interview, Housemarque said that it’s looking for solutions to Returnal‘s save system controversy, and it’s currently focused on “new content and updates and fixes and stuff like that.” No further details are available at this time.
Reflecting upon the past, Housemarque is keen to move on and attain new heights. In 2017, CEO Ilari Kuittinen declared that “arcade is dead” because the studio’s games experienced lackluster sales despite reviewing well. Now, Housemarque’s team comprises of “happy” 85 employees, according to Haveri.
As far as arcade is concerned, it’s not entirely dead because Housemarque will continue to develop with “arcade as a core tenet of all our games.” “The gameplay side of it, that’s exactly what we’ll bring to the new titles that we make,” Haveri concluded.
