You may have heard of developer Housemarque, due to the studio’s work on popular arcade-style games like Resogun, Deadnation, and Alienation. After announcing that “arcade is dead” and shifting its vision to working on games that will be more successful from a business perspective, it announced Stormdivers—a Battle Royale game. However, things might not be smooth sailing.
Due to the competitive nature of that market, with games like Apex Legends, Fortnite, and PUBG, CEO of Housemarque Ilari Kuittinen doesn’t think Stormdivers will be the hit they want it to be. He had this to say about the upcoming project:
The problem is with us we always have to change our idea. We originally thought that the game would be a premium game but now it should be free to play. And do we have enough content to do that? I don’t know. We’re kind of a bit short of money to fully realize what we want to do as a launch edition of the game. We’ll see.
It is tough. Whether we’re going to succeed, it’s unlikely because of the tough competition.
Luckily, the studio does have another AAA game in development that is supposed to be the biggest game Housemarque has made. Assuming Kuittinen is right about Stormdivers under-performing, the team can at least fall back on their unannounced title. The team working on Stormdivers is reported to be a mere 15 people, with around 60 working on the other unannounced game.
Even if Stormdivers doesn’t succeed, the studio is hopeful that it will at least serve as a learning opportunity since games as a service are much more complicated to make than what they’re normally familiar with.
It’s odd to hear a development studio be this candid about their game. You’d think even if the CEO believed their game would fail, they wouldn’t publicly say so. Housemarque is a tremendous developer that has proven itself, so at the very least, the team deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Stormdivers is expected to launch this year.
[Source: VG24/7]
