Sony’s newest first-party title Harmony is dealing with a really tough begin, at the very least on PC, failing to attract in even a thousand concurrent gamers on launch day.
Often the day of launch for a sport is often it’s largest day by way of gamers, so for developer Firewalk and writer Sony it should be at the very least a tad regarding that Harmony is posting very low numbers. In keeping with SteamDB, Harmony managed to hit a peak concurrent participant rely of simply 697 gamers.
That’s significantly decrease than the sport’s personal betas managed simply weeks in the past. In truth, to offer some perspective, even Redfall, which was thought-about an enormous flop, drew in over 6,000 gamers on its launch final yr. And that’s whereas it was accessible on Sport Move, giving folks even much less motive to pay full value on Steam. Redfall was additionally less expensive than Harmony which is promoting for £34.99.
It’s additionally a far cry from the large success that Sony’s different live-service sport from earlier this yr managed. Helldivers 2 grew to become an enormous success for the corporate, and continues to be drawing in 20-30k concurrent gamers day by day.
After all, these numbers don’t take note of how many individuals are enjoying on PS5. There might be many hundreds having fun with it on Sony’s machine, however typically talking I believe the Steam numbers are an honest indicator that Harmony isn’t doing nicely.
That’s a serious downside as a result of it looks as if Harmony has been in growth for a really very long time. A number of days in the past lead character designer Jon Weisnewski revealed that Harmony has really been in growth for a whopping 8 years. Of these 8 yr, Weisnewski has been engaged on the sport for five.
Now, to be truthful, that would imply a couple of issues. The sport might have been within the conceptual stage for fairly a couple of years earlier than it ever entered full-blown growth. Or his assertion could be taken at face-value and Harmony actually has been labored on for 8 years.
It is smart when you consider it. The sport has drawn comparisons to the likes of Overwatch and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, each of which have been very profitable on the time of Harmony’s inception.
Critically, although, it’s performing okay. Maintaining in thoughts just a few opinions have filtered out, principally attributable to code going out late and shops wanting to check real-world efficiency, the Metacritic rating is sitting at 68.
The sport’s Steam opinions are additionally at present “Largely constructive” based mostly on a couple of hundred folks ranking it.
Criticism brings us to @anim_xander, a former animator at Firewalk who dealt with first-person animation for a number of of the sport’s Freegunners, particularly Daw, Duchess and Kyps. Speaking to a different consumer on X who said that they have been sorry Harmony was @anim_xander’s first sport as a result of low participant rely, @anim_zander replied, “eh, i don’t actually care. it was an enormous labour from plenty of insanely gifted folks making an superior sport. why would i care a couple of bunch of talentless freaks hating on it?”
Evidently, the reply, which has now been deleted, didn’t go down very nicely, as folks rightfully identified that referring to folks disliking the sport as “talentless freaks” was an immature strategy to deal with criticism.
It’s unclear as to precisely who the previous developer is aiming the feedback at. I’m assuming it was meant towards criticism that Discord was closely influenced by DEI beliefs. Nevertheless, it may be levelled on the different main criticism I’ve seen on-line which is that the character designs are ugly. Even most of the constructive Steam opinions point out this.
No matter group the previous dev was concentrating on, the consequence is identical: it’s not an excellent search for a sport that wants all the nice publicity it may well get proper now. Harmony might snatch a win from the jaws of defeat right here, as different video games have managed to do with constructive phrase of mouth and a gradual constructing of belief. Sony and Firewalk have already dedicated to at the very least a couple of seasons of content material, in any case.
Proper now although, the truth is Harmony is an enormous flop, particularly for Sony who acquired Firewalk Studios in 2023, presumably as a result of they thought Harmony was going to be successful and an ideal subsequent step into the live-service market. Will these low participant numbers trigger the sport to go free-to-play or maybe even be provided to PS Plus Further members? Or will Sony attempt to journey it out?
