Returnal tanks on PC despite good reviews

Sony’s PC port of the critically acclaimed Returnal has had a rocky start on PC, attracting much fewer players than expected.

Sony Interactive Entertainment’s PC port of Returnal has gotten off to a rocky start, quickly becoming one of the worst-performing PlayStation games on PC.

Returnal is a third-person shooter game with roguelike elements, meaning that players are expected to die multiple times, but can carry some progress over between attempts at the game.

The game was first released on the PlayStation 5 shortly after the console’s launch, on April 30, 2021, and received rave reviews from critics and fans alike. In just a few months, the game had sold over half a million copies, an impressive feat for a game on a console that was heavily supply constrained for much of its early life.

The game was developed by now Sony subsidiary Housemarque, which previously developed games like Matterfall, Nex Machina, and Resogun for PlayStation platforms. The studio was acquired by Sony in 2021, shortly after the release of Returnal.

Much like many other PlayStation games of the era, Sony opted to release the title on PC, with the game releasing on Steam last week. The PC version of the game received similarly good reviews, earning itself a score of 87/100 on review score aggregator website Metacritic.

Despite those good reviews, however, it looks like players aren’t taking to the title like they have with previous PlayStation games. As reported by VGC, the game has had a very slow uptake on Steam, well below what previous PC games from the publisher launched to.

Returnal was updated in 2022 to add mutliplayer gameplay. Picture: Sony

The game had less than 7000 concurrent players on Steam during its opening weekend, the second-worst performing PlayStation title behind only Sackboy: A Big Adventure. Concurrent playership is usually a good measure of how well a game is performing on Steam, as the platform does not report total sales.

Sony’s best-performing PlayStation game to hit PC was 2018’s God of War, which peaked at 74,000 concurrent players. Other PlayStation games include Marvel’s Spider-Man, which saw 66,000 concurrent players, Horizon Zero Dawn, which saw 56,000 players, and Days Gone, at 28,000 players.

Sony recently revealed that one of the PS5’s best games would be free for subscribers to PlayStation Plus Extra and Deluxe, Sony’s game subscription service for its PlayStation platforms. Horizon: Forbidden West will become a part of the perks for subscribers later this month.

Returnal has some sections described as being similar to the “bullet hell” genre. Picture: Sony

Unfortunately, players on PS4 won’t be celebrating all that much, as it was revealed late last year that new DLC for the Horizon game would only be coming to the PS5. Sony says that the scope of the upcoming Burning Shores expansion is too great for the PS4’s ageing hardware.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.