Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II was released on May 21 following years of teasers and trailers. It was first announced in 2018 and was penned as being one of the most visually advanced games ever made – and to give the game credit, it hits that target just fine. However, it’s a testament to the fact that visuals aren’t everything, as recent sales data has revealed that the game performed terribly during May 2024.
Hellblade II is a fairly short game that offers an immersive, impactful story mixed up with groundbreaking visuals, and it performed fairly well in reviews when it was released. Presently, it sits on Metacritic with a score of 80, which isn’t awful.
However, US sales data published by Circana has revealed how poorly Hellblade II performed when it was released, with the game coming in 37th place overall in the charts for full-game dollar sales. On Xbox, it ended up in 21st place. In terms of player count, it fell behind the likes of Fallout 76, and on Steam, it peaked at just 3,892 players.
In the European sales charts, it was revealed that Hellblade II failed to break into the top 100 games in May. On streaming platforms, Hellblade II crashed pretty quickly. It reached a peak of 110,193 viewers on Twitch on launch day, but by the second day on the market, that number had dwindled by 90%, and by the following week, a peak of just 900 users was recorded.
It’s hardly a flash in the pan, but it’s a short-lived, short-form game that only offers a few hours of entertainment, and once you’re done, you’re done.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, read what Sketch said about the recent OnlyFans leaks and sign up for the Insider Gaming newsletter
Recover20 on July 9th, 2024 at 10:58 UTC »
It's a shame that after so long spent in production the game has been quickly forgotten about, and it was an incredibly short experience.
The charm of the first game was that it was £25 for a tight AA experience with AAA visuals with a few years in development.
This game cost £50 on the Xbox store and had twice the dev time, twice the graphical fidelity but introduced nothing new to the actual game. So you're left paying twice as much for only twice the graphical fidelity. It's a shame.
Zestyclose-Fee6719 on July 9th, 2024 at 10:21 UTC »
I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some people who were initially interested read about the nearly non-existent gameplay and short runtime and just watched YouTube playthroughs.
Blacksad9999 on July 9th, 2024 at 08:21 UTC »
By all accounts, the game was a mediocre at best tech demo.
I played through it, and while it's very visually impressive, that doesn't make it a good game. It simply wasn't.