Housemarque, the veteran Finnish development studio behind Resogun and Nex Machina, announced in a blog post today that they will abandon arcade style games after a lack of financial success.
In a post titled Arcade is Dead, Housemarque CEO Ilari Kuittinen said that the studio will move away from their arcade sensibilities to focus on “something totally different than you might expect”, citing a lack of sales for their recent title Nex Machina. The game was a twin stick shooter developed with Robotron creator Eugene Jarvis. We liked it a lot.
“Lacklustre sales of Nex Machina have led us to the thinking that it is time to bring our longstanding commitment to the arcade genre to an end,” Kuittinen said. “While this genre will always hold a special place in our hearts, the industry is moving more toward multiplayer experiences with strong, robust communities.”
Many Housemarque games were featured as free PlayStation Plus titles, though Kuitten said that didn’t help with sales. “While some of them have reached a massive audience due to free game offerings across various digital sales channels, this unfortunately doesn’t help pay for development,” Kuitten said. Resogun released in 2013 as one of the first games available at no added cose to people with a monthly Playstation Plus subscription, while zombie shooter Dead Nation and Ikaruga-inspired platformer Outland were later featured as well.
Housemarque’s announcement comes at a time where many are questioning the fate of some long-running styles of games. Recently, a statement from EA after the shutdown of Visceral Games led many news outlets to assert that single player games are dying, though our reporting showed that the situation wasn’t quite that simple and EA has since affirmed that they’re still into single player games. Kuittinen’s statement that “Arcade Is Dead” adds another type of game to now worry about.
Comments
6 responses to “Acclaimed PS4 Developer Housemarque Changes Course, Saying Arcade Games Are ‘Dead’”
The lack of comments speaks volumes for how sad everyone is over the death of Arcade games.
The only time Housemarque really captured my attention was with Alienation. It’s probably telling that the game featured far more RPG and progression elements than any of their previous games. The same screen multiplayer was a huge factor too. Whatever they do next, I hope they keep up the couch co-op.
Look at Wonder Boy Dragons trap, arcade is definitely not dead, it just doesn’t need developers spending 2 years making it a beautiful 3D textured masterpiece. Arcade is 100% about the experience and quickfire game play. The fact you can still pick up Mario/Megaman etc (Tekkan even?) now and play for 10-15 mins while waiting for the dinner to cook and put it down until tomorrow.
Great just what we need. Another developer going down the Gaas path because money.
Why dont they just be honest?
“We just want to move into making Loot box/FTP microtransaction games but don’t want you guys to be mad at us for doing so”
So, they make an arcade game (with some problems), try to sell it for $20 USD, and then are surprised when sales don’t go well…
Arcade games need to be priced in the $5-10 range… that’s basically part of their definition.