Stellar Blade breaks the PlayStation record for the most successful exclusive PC launch!
Shift Up claim they peaked at twice the concurrent player count of other PS exclusive titles.
But what does this mean for the game, and will this mean more Eve and less Steve?
Stellar Blade Breaks PlayStation Ego
Move over, Kratos, as Stellar Blade breaks PlayStation records now, not you!
A recent post by developers of the game Shift Up showcases an interesting data chart. According to the data, Stella Blade is the most successful PC launch of any other PS IP on PC!
Because the graph shows that it outsold other strong IP names such as Ghost Of Tsushima and Last Of Us.
Also, it apparently reached a 192k peak concurrent player count on Steam launch! That just completely trumps The Last Of Us at a peak of 30k and Kratos at 73k!
But it beat out the strongest, Ghost of Tsushima, by double, with it being 77k! However, it also boasts an overwhelmingly positive 98% positive review. As well as 3 million cumulative sales across both platforms and being the fastest-selling domestic game on Steam. Because Stellar Blade breaks PlayStation Wallet, surpassing 1 million copies in 3 days!
Also keep in mind this game runs on Unreal Engine 4 and is optimal on almost all builds PC-wise. The success of the game is so good they got the Korean dev team seeking more employees for another massive project.
However, this game is not even a first-party in-house game! This was not developed by Sony but merely funded towards aspects like marketing and polishing.
There were no Neil Druckmann Naughty Dog-tier blank cheques for the Shift team. Honestly, it was just pure gameplay and word of mouth that got the sales and figures Sony wished The Last Of Us got!
Eve My Queen
But why is it that cute robot lady Eve and her Stellar Blade break PlayStation but Alloy makes people sleep?
You can’t talk about the game without knowing or being aware of the discussion at large. In summary, is it that the fact that Eve is cute sold the game well? Honestly, a little bit, but there is a bit more to it.
There has been a pendulum shift in what gamers want in their games these days. We tire of the Boomer’s slow, bleak cinema wannabe Oscar bait thrill ride. The Last Of Us did that once; it was charming at first, but a million titles later and still doing the same thing, it got old fast.
I have to be honest and say the Eastern Devs focusing on what would have been a double-A title on PS2 has worked in their favour. Gamers want the equivalent of X Blade back in the limelight, not Horizon Zero Yawn!
Look at Ninja Gaiden 4 hitting it back and DMC5 selling like hot cakes. People want to have fun after work and stare at beauty. As Itagaki of DOA says, “It makes sense to create beautiful women rather than ugly women in video games… naturally.”
It’s not so much that other characters are ugly as much as poorly designed and unappealing. Or let’s be real, some are downright ugly to look at. Not every game has to be DOA, of course, but it highlights how out of touch some devs are with customer standards.
Reality is filled with ugliness daily, and to be reminded of that takes away from the charm. Also maybe don’t self-insert your mug if you aren’t the prettiest doll on the shelf! Although in Stellar’s case Eve was literally modelled after a real person, you get the idea!
Would you honestly prefer to look at an ugly character over a pretty one for 12 hours straight?
Also the game has pretty decent combat mechanics and is a fairly mindlessly fun romp. It’s not trying to win Oscars but just a few fun hours.
