Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice just received an optimization update that introduces ray tracing, 4K resolution, and 120Hz display for Xbox Series X|S players. While the update is also in development for PC players, Ninja Theory confirmed it currently has “no plans” to bring this update to players on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
The update adds three graphics modes with varying levels of frame rate, resolution, or visual fidelity, including the addition of ray tracing. There’s also a chapter select option. The developer’s choice not to bring these features to any platforms aside from Xbox and PC is disappointing, but not too much of a surprise bearing in mind the studio was acquired by Microsoft in 2018. Its sequel, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, will also be an Xbox and PC exclusive. Right now, PlayStation 4 Pro players can play Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice with “enhanced” resolution or 60fps depending on which mode they choose. HDR support was added with a later update.
In better news, Ninja Theory’s Social Media Ninja, Will Potter, announced Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice has managed to tot up 6.3 million total players across all platforms in the four years since it was released. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice launched exclusively for PlayStation 4 and PC in August 2017 and arrived on Xbox in April 2018. Despite needing just 300,000 sales to break even due to the low development costs, Hellblade had reached a total of 1 million sales just ten months later in June 2018. It was released on Nintendo Switch in April 2019 and the last player update we heard was it had managed to hit a total of 3.5 million players in July 2o20. This is a huge increase in player numbers but it’s unlikely they all translate to independent sales due to the game’s availability on Xbox Game Pass.
The critically acclaimed title has managed to rack up awards since its release too. It got the Writer’s Guild Award for Best Writing in a Video Game, five BAFTA awards, a TIGA award, a D.I.C.E. award, and four Develop Awards, as well as several Game of the Year awards at PlayStation LifeStyle.
