Housemarque

History

Founded in 1995, Housemarque are a Finnish developer that, prior to PS5, were primarily known for critically acclaimed arcade shooters like Super Stardust and Resogun. Most of Housemarque's games in their 30+ year history were also exclusively on PlayStation, with their last multiplatform title being 2011's Outland, shipping on both PS3 and Xbox 360.

In 2017, Housemarque decreed 'arcade is dead' after the poor commercial performance of their PS4 titles, despite continued critical acclaim, and moved away from typical arcade titles. This was first realized with 2021's Returnal on PS5, which kept the roguelike/arcade DNA for its gameplay, but moved to third-person, with far more emphasis on story and production value. This pivot gave Returnal more mainstream appeal, resulting in it becoming Housemarque's fastest-selling game at 560,000 copies in 3 months, and later surpassing 1 million units.

Due to this improved commercial success, it's unsurprising that Sony acquired Housemarque shortly after while they continued to support Returnal with a PC version and co-op mode. Housemarque then announced Saros as a spiritual sequel to Returnal in 2025, before shipping it in 2026 to a surprising reception.

My Analysis & Predictions

While Returnal is a roguelike, Saros is a roguelite, and this pivot to more permanent progression between runs was the marketing focal point. In theory, a more approachable Returnal (which many found too hard) should've furthered its mainstream appeal. However, Saros's sales trajectory is slightly slower than Returnal's, despite launching on a much larger PS5 install base.

Critically, Saros performed as well as Returnal on Metacritic. However, consensus among gamers was that the amount of permanent progression and gameplay modifiers was an overcorrection, resulting in Saros losing some of Returnal's magic that stuck long after players put it down.

Despite slightly unfavorable comparisons, though, Saros's critical acclaim was still in line with the best of Housemarque's arcade era, and surpassed those titles in sales too. Most importantly, they've successfully reinvented themselves with these 2 titles during Sony's live-service push, making Housemarque easily one of the bright spots for PS Studios this generation.

Housemarque are likely done on PS5, but they're in an excellent position to reach greater heights on PS6. Especially if they find that perfect middle ground between Returnal and Saros.

Saros Concept Art

PS5 Games