Looks like Hellblade 2 peaked at 3.9k concurrent users yesterday. Definitely somewhat worrying, even Redfall got 6k peak on Steam in spite of low reviews, HiFi also got a 6k peak there as a shadow drop with no marketing. I just hope Xbox doesn't close Ninja Theory, at the very least they are worth keeping around for technical support, they have proven themselves to be just as much masters of Unreal Engine as The Coalition, and Xbox now has at least 10 studios other than Ninja Theory that are using Unreal engine, some of which have historically struggled to get the most out of the engine. It's worth the budget of their AAA indie games just to keep them around for technical support, if nothing else.

Its a 4,5 - 5 hour game....  It has like 1,5-2 hour of gameplay... most of it walking forwards, and solveing puzzels, light combat.
Then The rest is cutscenes from what I hear.

The vast majority of players, will likely play it on gamepass (because of the above).  So steam numbers probably dont mean much for this title.
It wont sell much, however the xbox player base will enjoy it on a gamepass.  Again its the gamepass effect, it limits how much 1st party games can sell.


Its a good looking game though. And if you already have gamepass.... why not?

I doubt Xbox will shut down Ninja Theory.
They have alot of hands on experiance, with mocap and technology right at the edge of whats possible on current gen.
Even if they did, it would likely just be to move some of those people around, to other studios.

*edit:

Also we need to remember that Hellblade the first game, cost less than $10million to make.
Supposedly the 2nd installment, was way less than $50million.
These are not super expensive games to make.... but made by a small studio, cheaply.. just over a long periode of time.

• Black Ops
• Black Ops II
• Black Ops III
• Black Ops IIII
• Black Ops Cold War

What comes next?

• Black Ops 6

🥴

I can't wait for...

• Black Ops Seven
• Black Ops ∞
• Black Ops Nein!

You saw me play Hidden Cats in New York. I did buy London as well but that must have been several months ago. Completely forgot that I own it so thanks for making me realize. Starting it right now.

Pretty chill to play while listening to music or a podcast or something.

Shonobi teased Gears would look even better than Hellblade which is fucking wild because Hellblade is easily the best looking game of the gen so far, absolutely stunning presentation but it's also a very linear title so you'd think Hellblade would have the edge over Gears.

Playground should take advantage of Ninja Theory's full mocap studio too.

Would not be that surprising considering Gears 5 is still one of the best looking first party games, a game that was made in 3 and a half years after gears 4 and was full featured, co- op, escape horde etc, with a year later (while in covid)releasing another 15 maps for the MP/20 maps for escape, and the DLC.  Together with Playground they are the top tier devs.

Yeah apparently those hidden cats games were on sale but did not show up in the deals section. Just like sparkle 2 can't find it on sale in the deals but my list showed it was on sale....Annoying I feel I missed out on so many deals....