One of the biggest console exclusive flops of all time just hit a new low. Typically, when you hear “PlayStation” and “exclusive,” you think of incredible games and series like The Last of Us, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, Bloodborne, Persona 5, Horizon, and all of the various Final Fantasy exclusives over the years. When you hear “PlayStation exclusive” or “PlayStation console exclusive,” you think of quality, much like Nintendo. Not every game manages to live up to this bidding though. For example, Babylon’s Fall did not live up to this reputation.ย
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Developed by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix, the action RPG debuted back on March 3 via PC, PS4, and PS5. Upon release, the PS5 version of the game garnered a lousy 41 on Metacritic, while the PC version hardly did any better coming in at 46. Instantly, the game was one of the biggest critical flops in years, and as you would expect it didn’t fly off shelves. And this was a big shock, not only because of the aforementioned association between PlayStation exclusives and quality, but because PlatinumGames has shipped the likes of Bayonetta, Vanquish, NieR Automata, and Astral Chain over the years. However, it’s also shipped some absolute flops and shovelware, yet Babylon’s Fall may be its biggest blemish to date.
So, how did things get worse for the game? Well, according to Steam Charts, the game hit zero concurrent players on Steam recently. Over the last 24 hours, its peak number of concurrent players is only 21 so it’s easy to see how. Of course, there may be more playing on PS4 and PS5, but to hit zero players on Steam is actually, in a way, an impressive achievement, as it’s quite a rare achievement for a high-profile release that’s only a few months old.
Unfortunately, for the aforementioned duo, there’s probably no way back for the game at this point. As for PlayStation, it presumably worked out some deal to lock this game down as a console exclusive early in its development. And this deal was presumably not very cheap, and all it got in return was one of the biggest flops in quite some time. That said, this hasn’t been confirmed as the details of how the game became a console exclusive have never been elaborated upon.
