Despite Returnal’s incredible qualities, PC gamers don’t seem to care and currently performs well below the biggest PlayStation boxes.
Will the PC port of the fantastic Returnal flop? Unfortunately, if sales don’t take off, they take the path.
A complicated start for Returnal PC
As with the other PlayStation exclusives that landed on PC, we were entitled to a small onion port for Returnal. A version more beautiful than ever, with additional ray tracing and keyboard/mouse optimization to directly affect PC users. But despite Climax Studio’s best efforts, attendance has so far been very disappointing.
After SteamDB (above VGC), the peak of concurrent players was just 6691. Granted, it’s more than Sackboy A Big Adventure, which only drew 610 viewers, but it’s a very far cry from the brand’s tenors. The biggest games like God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man and Horizon Zero Dawn surpassed the 50,000 players with 74,000, 66,000 and around 56,000 respectively. Days Gone and Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection gathered 28,000 and 10,851 players respectively.
To see what Sony’s goals are for Returnal on PC, but on PS5 it’s been a hit with more than 560,000 copies sold in the first two months of launch.
A sequel on PS5?
For now, Housemarque teams are focused on creating a new license, but a Returnal 2 isn’t out of the question. According to Eevi Korhonen, Senior Narrative Designer, the question of a sequel arises “It remains to be defined”.