Returnal PC Disappoints; Active Player Number Speaks for Itself
Sony's PC port of Returnal failed to attract the players. The title, which was quite popular on the PS5, seems to have fallen out of favor with PC audiences.
The PC port of Returnal was released a few days ago and failed to attract crowds, as did the PC versions of October's Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection and Sackboy: The Great Adventure. There may be several reasons for this.
Another Sony port with poor activity results
According to stats collected by SteamDB, the Steam version of Returnal managed to gather only 6691 players at the same time, at best. In turn, the average activity score oscillates between 3,000 and 6,000 players. It is worth noting that the game was also released on Epic Games Store, but it can be assumed with high probability that the result on Epic's platform does not beat the result achieved on Steam.
The first game ported from PlayStation consoles to PC was Days Gone - this took place in May 2021. Since then, to the delight of gamers, the company has become more willing to port their big hits, which were previously available only on PS4 and PS5 consoles. The results of other Sony ports in terms of the number of simultaneously active players can be found below.
- God of War - 73,529 players.
- Marvel's Spider-Man - 66,436 players.
- Horizon: Zero Dawn - 56,557 players.
- Days Gone - 27,450 players.
- Spider-Man: Miles Morales - 13,539 players.
- Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves collection. - 10,851 players.
- Sackboy: The Great Adventure - 610 players.
With the release of the collection of adventures of Nathan Drake and Chloe Frazer on PC with each new game, you can see a decline in interest in Sony ports (here we mean Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Sackboy: The Great Adventure). Time will tell if the release of the PC port of The Last of Us: Part I, announced for March 28, will manage to end this bad streak.
What is the problem?
There are several likely reasons for the problem of low interest in the game on release day.
- Releasing the game during the season of hot launches, including, Hogwarts Legacy (peak on Steam: a dizzying 879k), as well as the day before the release of Wild Hearts (28 thousand).
- The title represents a rather niche genre, which is roguelike - death means restarting the level and losing some of the acquired inventory. The unforgiving gameplay formula may have discouraged a large number of players, who expect less of a challenge from the game.
- The high price - full $59.99 for a two-year game may have influenced purchase decisions. We can mention here the potentially interested people, or 31 thousand viewers on Twitch within the first 24 hours of the release.
Returnal was released on April 30, 2021 on PS5 and on February 15, 2023 on PC. On consoles the title collected great reviews and received the Game of the Year title from BAFTA. The PS5 version of the game boasted high sales.
