We Still Don't Know Sales Figures, But Saros PS5 Player Stats Reveal Some Big Numbers

So those 330k numbers might be right

13 million deaths? I understand this is a game where each player fails, a lot. So if on average everyone has died 20 times that would mean around 660k sales.

I have no idea if that is a decent sales number or not, so I've pretty much just wasted my own time.

Ahh the useless stats that mean nothing. This just tells you what a massive sales failure it was.

@Ooccoo_Jr I have died at least twenty times in the first area… but I am garbage.

It kind of reminds me of when Xbox wasn't doing well and they started releasing such stats.

At any rate, I'm really rooting for the game. If they were to permanently reduce its price, it'd stand a chance at being very successful, but alas.

All I can say is I’ve put over 50 hours into it and it’s been pure bliss. Rifles, crossbows and Prominence for me. And when it comes to the microliths, R1 over triangle 😊

@TheSwitchBit The total hours played probably implies the 300k number was not right. Maybe more like 500k?

6.63m hours for 300k players would be an average playtime of 22.1 hours. The average completion time for story is 17.5 hours and for 100% completion it is 27 hours.

You'd expect the average playtime much lower than the completion time since most players don't complete games, or take a long time to do so. It seems that 32.3% of players have completed act 3, 20.7% have completed the epilogue.

Edit: I thought 15 hours might be a reasonable average playtime but I checked PS-timetracker and the average playtime there is 14:23 hours. I'd expect the global average to be considerably less than the PS-timetracker sample which will skew towards more engaged gamers.

I'd be quite confident in saying the game has sold around 500-600k so far.

I’m still working on Saros (just beat The Shepherd this morning) but I confess I have died a lot. Good stuff though. I appreciate chill games (I am also playing Two Point Museum’s latest art expansion) but I also enjoy fair but savage games.

@themightyant I can’t speak for everyone else but for me I just find failures to be more fun to talk about. Not that successful titles aren’t but unless you have played them or they are some kind of major industry redefining masterpiece it’s harder to care about them.

@themightyant we live in werid times that no one can mind their own business just enjoy gaming

@themightyant I don't like seeing good games fail, but Sony pricing this at £70 seems pure hubris.

I can tell you that I’ve contributed far more deaths than boss defeats to those statistics, for sure! 😂

@INeedGoodGraphics people say this a lot but you won't find official sales figures for most Call of Duty games or Fifa games.

If they’re not bragging about sales then it’s not a hit in a way they expected. It’s possible Sony is being stingy and not willing to admit anything until they hit a million instead of 500k but that seems unlikely.

snort

When you start trying to write stories talking about these kind of numbers, you know the game failed commercially. I will give it a go when they put it on Plus.

@Swandivetotheasphalt maybe. I know many that put in more hours past the platinum though. Ive out in 35 hours, a lot of folks putting in more to get databank completion etc....

Of course you have the people who whenever beat it too playing less. But even with those hours its obviously not selling over a million etc....

Should've made it part of the Returnal IP. Even if the story is disconnected the gameplay mechanics can be the connective tissue between installments.

I do have to agree with a few other comments, if a game sells really well and fast, the PR team is usually posting about it on their socials, but that isn't happening with Saros so the estimated sale numbers are likely correct.

@voltum3l @voltum3l @voltum3l lol actually he’s not gay i dunno where these internet wild speculations come from. He cheated on her with another woman in brothel so he’s friend tries to tell his wife so he killed his friend now his wife somehow knew about his affair so she dumped him for another lesbian woman
I know the game struggles poorly with horrendous bad writing trying explaining dynamic logic during vague scenarios, but here is what happened. Hope this helps

@themightyant I feel like Sony thought this was going to be bigger than it is. A bullet hell roguelike shooter is not that common of a genre and one of the reasons Returnal sold so well is that there were almost no PS5 exclusives at the time of its release.

It was also a very difficult game and many people stopped playing without beating it, reducing the interest in a "sequel" such as Saros.

I honestly think this game should've had a smaller budget that reflects its niche market.

I started it last night, so probably too late for these stats. But I've contributed two deaths and one boss kill to this game in the hour and forty minutes or so that I've played. So far, it seems a lot easier than Returnal.

I keep hearing people say Saros shouldn't be $70 but I'm not hearing that about Lego Batman a kiddie game that's really no different from other Lego games that PS5 fan's aren't going to have no problem spending $70 for that game but for Saros it's so many excuses why u don't want to buy this game that's different from other games on the market If a Logo game can sell at $70 why can't Saros🤔

@themightyant Yeah, I would hope it would, as Housemarque makes great games. But like you, I'm skeptical.

@Psnfanboy79 I think the brand in the case of Lego Batman is very strong and justifies the asking price. Sales certainly reflect that. I firmly believe that had Helldivers II been priced differently, it wouldn't have sold anywhere near as well as it did.

@naruball No Lego game should be $70 IMO

Wake me up when people stop banging on about sales/player numbers and how it determines a games success. Dull

@BusyOlf Wait are you saying sales don't determine why a game is a success.

@Psnfanboy79 I don't disagree, but the reality is that more people are willing to pay $70 for it than for games like Saros.

Well, I account for 1 sale of the game and zero deaths, zero enemies killed, and zero bosses killed. 😅
My copy is still sitting on the shelf.

All pointless data. In a game where you gonna die and kill a lot that's basically the most useless data, only becoming usefull if you have a heatmap or gameplay data attached and basically only useful for the tuning/balance team.

Its cool to know, but doesn't change the fact it is useless.

@themightyant
Because the consumers have a certain expectation when it comes to games, if a game goes against that expectation only failure is able to comunnicate to developers "Hey, we don't want that kind of game".
EDIT: There's also the fact that very few games that earn this type of hate are actually good.

I see some of you are struggling with the fact that Saros is a great game.That's okay. Healing is a journey. When you've processed your grief, it'll still be right here, being good at you.

I killed two bosses, killed about a hundred enemies and collected 60,000 lucenite just today. I'm doing my part!

In-game player stats rather than sales numbers.

This reminds me of how Microsoft used to celebrate its first party Xbox One games.

People here complain nearly every day about the "lack" of first-party single player games, only to then celebrating them "failing."

What a strange site this is...

This is a niche game like many first party Sony games. It doesn’t need to be a sells hit which means 7 figures these days. As long as it breaks even and earns a profit that’s all that matters. So that the developers can do another project. Executives and normies need to get over the marvel effect which makes people think every thing has to be a hit. The first game didn’t interest me nor does this one plus the plot doesn’t help it. The industry needs more small to medium games that can make money. I hope Sony continues to support various types of story driven games. We want variety for PS studios.

Announcing this type of data means game is flop. 💯

@themightyant
I wasn't talking about Saros especifically, but rather the whole "wanting for a game to fail" thing.

Saros is an outlier because the game is good, but people want it to fail because either they don't like the story, or rather how the story was presented, or they don't like the $70 price tag for an AA game.

I wish nothing but success for housemarque and Saros but don’t they usually bring these meaningless stats out when a game’s not selling that well to make it look like it is by bamboozling your mind with “million” figures? This is an Xbox tactic.

Some Sony studios usually posted players stats / achievement like how many times players took screenshot, got killed, hours played, popular weapons etc. I'm pretty sure i've seen the same stats for GoW 2018, Horizon, GT 7, Spiderman, Ghost of Tsushima, and also Returnal. But just because they posted these stats doesn't mean the game is a flop.

@8th_Observer Ikr. I really don't get the logic of those people.

@PuppetMaster "I'm pretty sure i've seen the same stats for GoW 2018, Horizon, GT 7, Spiderman, Ghost of Tsushima, and also Returnal."

All flops

This is a bit low-stat. Especially the deaths. In Returnal, my total deaths are between 200-300 after I got the platinum trophy. XD

@8th_Observer Big massive flops. No wonder PD, SP, Guerilla, Santa Monica, Insomniac, and Housemarque got closed down. It's nice that Sony doesn't need to make single player games anymore, especially for those ***** who's happy to see a game failed. I welcome our live service overlord 🙇‍♂️

@somnambulance I thought there was like a Sony store policy they don’t discount new releases within 30 days of launch? (Or did I make that up?)

In any case, I didn’t jump into Saros in day 1 but would definitely be interested in a sale later this year myself.

From my time with Saros so far, I'm really enjoying it. It's a fantastic game.

It's just a game that's priced £20 - £30 higher than it should be. Unfortunately that's on Sony and their insistence on making their first party titles full RRP.
I'd like to see Saros get a price cut down to £50 or £45, but realistically, Returnal is still up for £70 so it's probably not gonna happen.

@arsmolinarc How would they do that? In the overwhelming majority of interpretations I've read, everything in Returnal took place in the protagonist's head and she either never left earth at all or was an astronaut, but not in any futuristic version of earth that would have ships like the Helios or be traveling to other galaxies. I'm not sure how many times you can tell the story of delusional people imagining themselves to be exploring far flung planets while in a coma. At some point, a game designer working on games set in another galaxy probably wants to have the protagonist go to another galaxy.

@Nei Not as good as Phantasy Star 2, though. The story telling in Housemarque games leaves a lot to be desired. It's like they get really close to a great story, but second guess themselves and obfuscate the entire thing to give themselves plausible deniability. The player ends up with a half developed game that could have been great (and twice as long) if the devs had the courage to make a decision and stick to their guns. Instead, I'm slow walking down the same hallways over and over again to get hints and glimpses of what a great game would have looked like while reading the 87th different opinion on whether Selene was driving the car, was the kid in the back seat, or was the astronaut in the road. That's not a fun video game to me.

Like, imagine if Dark Falz was all in Alis's head while Alis fell asleep at her computer playing Ultima 2 and Nei was a troll figurine she had on her keychain, all of which was revealed to you in sequences spread across the game that were so obscure, you aren't quite sure what they mean. Does that sound like a fun game? How do you make a sequel to that involving Dark Falz when you've already established it only exists in Alis's head and Alis is just some random human kid on earth who has nothing to do with the Algo star system? That's not a story you can easily continue.

@Swandivetotheasphalt It was 330K when they posted the article. More sales would have happened by now…

@FatalBubbles The Alinea Analytics estimate was 300k. Not sure where this 330k number comes from.

I think this becomes more interesting when you compare to a similar post for Returnal, also posted about a month in (although this one doesn’t mention a specific time frame)
Saros had more hours played and player deaths in similar or less time, which could indicate slightly better sales. But, of course, it doesn’t have to

@Swandivetotheasphalt We are not haggling over 30K copies. My point is still valid. Sales keep going up as time goes on, so naturally they would be higher than they were when they put that out.

@Michael10293978 Hey, just saw this reply: great Phantasy Star 2 nod.
And I get you, there's a place for grand space opera - M. Banks, your Hyperion Cantos - but I do think it's just as much interesting (if not more) happening when sci-fi turns inward. The kind of stories that use the cosmos not as a backdrop for adventure but as a mirror for something fractured inside the protagonist. Returnal understood that instinctively; the alien landscape was never really the point — Selene was. Saros carries that same DNA, that same sense of a mind trying to impose meaning on a universe that offers none in return, but an echo of human will.

It's very Stanisław Lem or Philip K. Dick at his most paranoid and tender. The horror isn't just out there in the dark between stars. It's the creeping suspicion that you are the unreliable narrator of your own existence. That's a much harder story to tell, and a much more rewarding one to experience when it lands.

Some of yall need to do some soul searching to understand why you take such joy in the failure of others.

@Hoff Was? I did not know game sales end after two weeks, this is new information. Previously I have thought games keep selling years, and with current price break-even is a bit over one million units