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Saros is off to a slow start according to sales estimates from Alinea Analytics, which predict the title has sold around 300k copies since it launched approximately two weeks ago.
It’s important to underline that this data is not an official number, and comes courtesy of a source whose numbers have come under scrutiny. Some of its predictions have been within the right ballpark; others have been queried. We still don’t know its exact methodology.
But if accurate, analyst Rhys Elliot notes sales may be slower than Returnal, despite the PS5’s vastly larger install base.
Housemarque’s previous game launched when Sony’s current console was still relatively new, of course, and had an addressable audience of around eight million consoles. That number sits at around 93.7 million now, according to PlayStation’s own financial report.
The difference is that the PS5 is a much richer ecosystem these days. Saros is competing against hundreds and hundreds of games, whereas when Returnal launched there was pent-up enthusiasm for something new, designed and built specifically for the hardware.
As we noted from the PS Store charts, Saros did look like it was off to a slow start, even if the data only accounted for one day of sales and its Early Access period. It’s possible the game ends up a slow burn, as word of mouth is very good.
However, looking at our recent poll on the topic, it seems more of you prefer Returnal to Saros, although it is admittedly pretty close between the two.
We’ll need to wait for official sales data from Sony, or at least Circana ranking, before we can determine exactly how well Saros has done.
But these estimates indicate a slow start, for a game that was probably never going to be a juggernaut anyway.