Housemarque Is Done Making Arcade Shooters, Mainly Due To Financial Reasons

Over the past few years, Housemarque has been a great go-to-company for twin-stick shooters, [...]

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Over the past few years, Housemarque has been a great go-to-company for twin-stick shooters, starting with the PlayStation 3 classic Super Stardust HD and moving onto other games, like Resogun, Dead Nation, Matterfall and one of this year's most surprising releases, Nex Machina. However, while this line-up of games may be well received by fans, the company just isn't making enough money off of them.

So it's decided to make a very harsh decision to move on from the arcade shooter market, and into different genres. This isn't a goodbye so much, but rather a change of pace.

In a new blog post simply named "Arcade Is Dead" (ouch), Housemarque CEO Ilari Kuittinen addressed the matter, stating that the company will work more on "something totally different than you might expect," despite the fact that it was so devoted to Nex Machina just a few months ago.

"Lackluster sales of Nex Machina have led us to the thinking that it is time to bring our long-standing commitment to the arcade genre to an end," he explained. "While this genre will always hold a special place in our hearts, the industry is moving more towards multiplayer experiences with strong, robust communities."

A partnership with PlayStation Plus did help the distribution a couple of Housemarque's games (particularly Resogun), but not enough to spur sales where they needed to be. "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," Kuittinen explained.

That said, it wasn't clear just what Housemarque would be working on next. Shooters have been its focus for years, though it did make a golf game for Xbox 360 years ago called Golf: Tee It Up! that didn't do half bad. So it can move on to other genres – the only question here is how effectively it will do so.

In the meantime, if you haven't checked out Nex Machina yet, you should. It's available for PlayStation 4 and PC, and a physical PS4 version will also be released next week by Limited Run Games.

Check out our Nex Machina review to get more insight!

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