Many were convinced that Returnal on PC would do just fine. However, reality promptly denied this scenario. Launched last week, the porting of the exclusive PlayStation 5 developed by Housemarque certainly didn't win the hearts of Steam and Epic Games Store users.
The numbers were revealed by SteamDB, a site that deals with track various game-related data on the Valve client. The site constantly monitors the releases and players who start the various titles in the Steam catalog. In the case of Returnal, the game struggled (and continues to struggle) tremendously. Despite not having the sales figures, the maximum number of simultaneous users was just 6,691. A decidedly lower peak than other exclusives, such as Uncharted 4 in its complete version, however already lower than others such as God of War and Horizon: Zero Dawn.
There are several reasons why Returnal may have failed. The first is certainly due to the absence of real marketing. The second, however, concerns the launch window: the game made its debut a few days after the release of Hogwarts Legacy and practically at the same time as Wild Hearts by Electronic Arts , which has been able to monopolize a large part of the attention, being an unpublished IP .
Beyond these numbers, the journey of PlayStation exclusives on PC will continue. After Returnal, the next game in the pipeline will be The Last of us Part 1. This is the revival of the historic game Naughty Dog, which debuted on PS5 in September 2022. We are quite certain that the adventure of Ellie and Joel however, it will be able to offer much better sales and user performances compared to the Housemarque exclusive, given that it will also be driven by the marketing of the TV series, broadcast these weeks on HBO in America and Sky in Italy.
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