Hellblade 2, which has been anticipated for years, has finally arrived with stunning Unreal Engine 5 graphics and an amazing story. On Metacritic, the game received an 81/100 rating, indicating that early reviews have been rather inconsistent throughout the industry.
Hellblade 2 sales doesn’t seem to be performing so well on Steam after its launch, either. Just nearly 4K peak concurrent players have been attained.
Why it matters: Despite harsh criticism, games like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League managed to reach over 7,000 players, making this a pretty poor start.
Hellblade 2 sales had fewer than 2,000 players at launch. Although the number of concurrent players increased over time, it only reached a peak of 3,982, far behind the majority of Xbox’s most recent first-party offerings.
For comparison, on opening day, Redfall had almost 6,000 gamers. The top player count of the original Hellblade is much greater, and upon launch, Sony’s PC version of Ghost of Tsushima had over 50,000 players.
Thankfully, the game has reached Steam’s list of top sellers. Although the Xbox marketing and early pre-orders raised concerns, the story-driven game is starting to take shape based on its ranking.
Hellblade 2’s performance on day one has been rather disappointing, but we expect it to improve over time. The game was previously released by Ninja Theory at a discounted price, but the developer doesn’t seem to be having much luck drawing in customers.
Xbox Game Pass also has a case to be made. Although a lot of people have probably tested the game on this subscription, prior Xbox games have had a lot of players on Steam even though they were day one subscription titles.
Hellblade 2 seems to be struggling to find its niche on Steam, but the game seems to have hit all the marks for those who enjoy narrative-driven and atmospheric adventures. There seems to be no middle ground on opinions for this title, so we suppose this is reflected in the day-one player counts, as well.
