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Astro Bot Sells 1.5 Million Copies

Sony’s latest first-party smash-hit, Astro Bot, has sold over 1.5 million copies in nine weeks.

During Sony‘s Q2 fiscal year result, which ended on September 30, the Japanese giant showed off game sales across its major titles, with applicable games having its numbers combined with PC, such as Helldivers 2, which sits at 12 million, and 2018’s God of War, which stands at 23 million.

Considering Astro Bot is continuing to thrive, especially as new content is added, we suspect this number is a bit higher now as more people are willing to bite the bullet of the game after seeing more content. Developer Team Asobi is obviously pretty dedicated not just to this cutesy bot, but also filling a void that basically all of PlayStation’s studios don’t touch.

In our review, we said: “This lovable, adorable white and blue bot offers a mixture of fun and engaging platforming gameplay with the PS5 spin and PlayStation nostalgia to please both new and longtime fans in multiple ways. “

Player Count For Original Horizon Zero Dawn Eclipses Remaster

While its reasonable to expect remasters to attract more players than the original versions, exceptions happen every now and then. The original Horizon Zero Dawn vs the recent PS5 and PC remaster is among these exceptions.

Push Square took to Steam to compare the player counts between both versions of the Guerrilla Games 2017 hit. In their findings, the 2017 Horizon Zero Dawn had concurrent players peak at 2,588 compared to the remaster’s peak player count at 2,251. These numbers were collected during the span of 24 hours. Additionally, the all-time record for the original version of Horizon reached 56,557 players compared to the remaster’s 2,538. Based on these numbers alone, it seems on the surface that the remaster (at least on PC)… isn’t attracting the amount of players and that players have much more interest in the original.

As of this posting, the 2024 remaster was just released last week on Halloween. Though it may still be a point of concern for the remaster’s developer Nixxes, there’s still plenty more time ahead to watch and see whether or not the concurrent player counts will improve for the remaster. Afterall, these are just looking at PC player counts for both original and remaster, PS4/PS5 player counts are not included. Granted for PS4/PS5, console player counts are not commonly tracked in the same way as Steam player counts.

Though if player counts for the remaster do not improve over time, there could be a number of reasons why the original Zero Dawn still sees more players than the new remaster. One possible explanation is how Sony increased the original’s price from $19.99 to $39.99, making this a potential deal-breaker for some fans. At the same time, existing players were offered a $9.99 fee to upgrade to the remaster. There have also been mixed fan reviews to the remaster on Steam, as reported by PC Gamer. Fans criticized the PSN account requirements in addition to various glitches and performance issues that may be limiting sales (and thus the concurrent player count). Finally, there’s the consideration that fans may view the remaster as pointless or made too soon due to Horizon Zero Dawn getting ported to PC just a few years ago in 2020 (via GamesRadar).

Whatever the case, only time will tell if the remaster will attract more players and if the current relatively low player count will affect Sony’s strategy of porting PlayStation exclusives to PC (including their remasters/remakes).

What do you think? Is it too early to sound the alarm on the Horizon remaster’s player count, or is this an early sign for trouble heading for the remaster? Let us know below!

Bungie Joins PlayStation To Support All First-Party Live Service Games

Bungie

Bungie Creative Studios has joined PlayStation Studios to build the foundation and a creative team to support future first-party live service games.

Senior director, Bridget O’Neill, took to LinkedIn to firstly announce the move and her new position as the senior director at PlayStation Studios.

It’s frankly not too shocking that Sony is looking at reaping the benefits of a studio that has been in the live service market for so long. By and large, the model has been vital to Bungie’s work since the original Destiny launched in 2014.

In 2022, PlayStation bought the studio for that specific reason, after all, Sony continues to strive to make waves — and is currently failing — in the live service market. A mere year after the acquisition, Bungie faced round of layoffs, as well as eliminating 220 roles earlier this year, with 155 roles integrated into Sony itself.

Guerrilla Is “Done With” Killzone As A Team

Killzone: Mercenary

Guerrilla Games putting a focus on the Horizon series and leaving Killzone behind was a deliberate decision by the studio. In other words, it was done with the series as a team.

In a Washington Post interview, art director Roy Postma, a 24-year vet with the studio, revealed the team simply didn’t want to work on the series anymore, wanting a refresh and the much more vibrant and colorful world of Horizon was its way of escape.

“We were done with it as a team, as a studio, we needed to refresh the palette. It was, by choice, the opposite of Killzone.”

Unfortunately this paints a very bleak picture to the group of people who held onto the very slim chance of the series coming back, but unless Sony gives the project to another studio, we highly doubt the series will continue and its legacy has ended with 2018’s Killzone: Shadow Fall.

Next Naughty Dog Game Will Give More “Player Freedom”

Naughty Dog

Naughty Dog’s next game is poised to have more “player freedom,” if rumors are to be believed. Frankly, that shouldn’t surprise us too much.

On MinnMax (via VGC), Ben Hanson spreads the word that a source of his divulged a bit of what Naughty Dog is planning, specifically that it will have more “player freedom” than its previous entries. What with game director and studio figure Neil Druckmann admitting to being inspired by games like Elden Ring, this shouldn’t be too hard to believe.

In the end, a brand-new Naughty Dog game isn’t too hard to believe, what with Druckmann denouncing assertions of the studio being stuck as “The Last of Us studio.” As part of that, it’s all-too-possible that this is their first step, after all they already vowed to hold your hand less.

We already knew that it has more than one single player game in the pipeline and a job advert that points to a first-person perspective project. This certainly would be a huge change of pace for the studio, but we’ll have to wait and see if this really is their next project or not.

Firesprite Is Developing Until Dawn 2

More fuel has been thrown into the fire of Until Dawn 2 being a thing under PlayStation’s Firesprite. We suspect Supermassive Games working on Little Nightmares 3 has something to do with the dev change.

XboxEra co-founder Nick “Shpeshal Nick” Baker remarked on Twitter that he knew about the sequel to the 2015 PlayStation exclusive and is sour that he wasn’t the one that broke the news. Notably, this rumor stems from 2022 when it was rumored that the studio was working on a triple-A horror game. It could also tie into a previous report from earlier this year.

Naturally, as with any leak, caution should be taken, especially since Baker doesn’t have the best track record, but does have a solid enough record that he could be right on the money.