Leading up to the launch of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, Ninja Theory emphasized a lot about how the game would be a graphics revolution. The studio talked about how they had to travel to Iceland to scan the location where the game was set and also 3D scan assets for the game. Notwithstanding all the effort, it appears the sequel did not fly commercially.
The May 21 release did hit a new high in visual realism. However, the numbers have shown that it takes more than visuals to impress most gamers. New statistics show that the game performed poorly in its launch month.
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The recently released US sales data by Circana shows that Hellblade 2 was 37th on the charts for full-game dollar sales. On Xbox, it performed a little better at 21st position. Its concurrent player count fell miles away from expectations, peaking at 3,892 players on Steam.
Its performance on the European sales charts is even worse. According to a report by GamesIndustry.biz, Hellblade 2 failed to break into the top 100 games in May. On streaming platforms, Hellblade 2 hit 110,193 peak viewers on Twitch on launch day before crashing to 900 after 24 hours.
At the time of writing, Hellblade 2 had 30 active players on Steam according to VGInsights (a website that provides Steam statistics). The site also estimates that the game sold only around 119,000 units on Steam, earning the studio $4.8 million—the game costs $50.
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In contrast, the original game sold 1.5 million units on Steam and earned the studio $29.9 million. According to Forbes, the first installment attracted 6 million players in four years. The first game had a budget of around $10 million.
Although the sequel had a higher budget and involved a larger team, its commercial performance failed to account for that. Perhaps, the team would have focused on improving other aspects of the game besides just the graphics.
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