
Players have spent almost 10% less time on PlayStation consoles in June 2022 than they did in June 2021. Although the gameplay time in June did improve by 3% from May, it had a staggering decline from June 2021. The average gameplay time for PlayStation players declined by almost 15% from the same quarter of 2021. In another bad finding, the total player engagement has also been decreasing from last year. Both of these factors have contributed to the 2% decrease in PlayStation Studio’s revenues. On the other hand, first-party titles for PlayStation Studios have also not been doing so well, and their sales have also gone down. Sony also cited this as one of the main reasons for its decrease in profits. Details tell us that sales of all sorts of games have shown a decreasing trend. Non-first-party titles showed a decrease in sales this quarter, and that also includes add-on content. PlayStation Studios’ games and network sales have gone down by 2% over the last fiscal year. Game & Network Services Segment (G&NS Segment) from the Q1 FY2022 Consolidated Financial Results. However, even the first-party titles from the company are showing a downward trend, and that is concerning. Profits for the gaming goliath, PlayStation Studios, are down by up to 37% due to a lack of third-party game sales.

Recently, Sony’s Q1 FY2022 Consolidated Financial Results finally came out today, and the company also reported major losses. Even major companies like Microsoft haven’t been exempted from this and suffered some losses. These delays and shortages are now manifesting themselves in the form of decreased profits for companies. However, the pandemic stopped every big industry from functioning well, and the gaming industry is no exception.ĭelays in some major video game releases and console shortages were probably the most significant impacts of COVID-19. It earns more money than industries like music and film combined, which is a remarkable milestone. In other news, Santa Monica Studio has reiterated a 2022 release window for God of War Ragnarok, and PSVR 2’s playable demo at GDC 2022 seems to have impressed developers.Gaming is one of the biggest industries on the planet, without any doubt.

Ultimately, everything came together and Housemarque “punched above its weight” to deliver a successful game, and working with Sony seems to have helped. “That’s why you end falling off ledges and getting killed by cheapshots because you spent all of your time trying to shoot enemies,” Kreuger continued, acknowledging that the developers could have improved certain aspects like aim assist, which should have been stronger.
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“We were learning how to use the engine, we were breaking things, creating dependencies that we didn’t understand… we were just learning as we went.”Įlsewhere in his talk, Krueger revealed that Returnal became somewhat unintentionally difficult for players because Housemarque was “trying to make a 3D game feel as simple as a 2D game.” He acknowledged that shooting and doing other things at the same time can make gameplay unnecessarily hard. As reported by IGN, director Harry Krueger likened it to a “leap of faith” where developers had to “build our wings while falling.” “It’s not an exaggeration to say that for half of the game’s development time it was unplayable,” Krueger added.


One of Returnal’s biggest development challenges was having to come to grips with Unreal Engine 4.
