Last year, Housemarque released Returnal as a PS5 exclusive, and a couple of months later, Sony added Housemarque to PlayStation Studios via acquisition. While a critical success, Returnal failed to penetrate the commercial market, so it should come as no surprise that the studio isn’t working on a sequel, but a brand new IP. Unfortunately, this is the extent of the tease. There’s no word of what the game is called, what the genre it is, or when it could release.ย
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The confirmation of the team working on a new IP comes the way of Ilari Kuittinen, managing director at Housemarque, who noted its “early days,” but the current project is a new IP and in the pre-production stage. Below, you can view the whole comment with all of its context.
“Well, the jury is still out there,” said Kuttinen when asked about how the developer can hold on to its roots in the arcade genre in a market quickly leaving behind this legacy of games. “We’re one of the very last dinosaurs making arcade games. Nex Machina, a few years ago, was very much a shoot-’em-up game in the style of the coin-ops from the ’80s. That’s sort of a clue. But it’s interesting. We’ve been thinking about that. We had our stint working on multiplayer games, because a few years back it seemed like you needed to have some kind of multiplayer experience. We tried that, and we really didn’t do it as well. But it’s early days with us starting a new game, a new IP, concepting it out. We’ll see what comes with that.”
“We’re really trying to hold on to that identity, as you mentioned. It’s wonderful right now that gaming has grown and evolved so much that there’s so much variety and diversity of game experiences,” adds Harry Krueger, game director at Housemarque. “They can all peacefully coexist. There can be live service games, multiplayer games, games with many different sensibilities. Returnal is just another voice. At this stage we’re quite proud of what we accomplished with Returnal, and we’re quite excited to pursue that same trajectory as a company.”
It’s hard to know what should and shouldn’t be made of this statement, but it sounds like Housemarque may not be totally leaving behind its arcade roots just quite yet.ย
H/T, Venture Beat.
