Housemarque, the creators of Returnal announced their next game Saros at the Sony State of Play this past February. Returnal was a very well received and loved game by its fans. The game currently sits at a 86 on Metacritic and 89 on opencritic.

3 months after Returnal’s release, Sony acquired Housemarque in July of 2021. Before Returnal, Housemarque had only made smaller games like Super Stardust HD and Resogun. To get acquired by a name like Sony after your first attempt at a AAA game is quite the achievement.

In an interview with Finnish publication Helsingin Sanomat (paywalled), CEO and co-founder Ilari Kuittinen gave us an understanding of just how significant it was to land the Sony acquisition.

When speaking on what it was like before the company released Returnal,  Kuittinen had this to say. “On every sales and conference trip, you wondered if this was the company’s last outing.” He continued to say, “The difficult times were made easier by the fact that we were constantly negotiating new projects, so there was always a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Kuittinen even went on to speak about why they chose to sell to Sony. “We had the feeling that it was better to try to get into a big family than to stay independent for the next few years,”. He went on to say, “The sale seemed like the best solution for everyone,”.

Given where the studio started, I doubt they ever imagined being at a place where they are making games like Saros. We don’t know how much money has gone in to developing Saros, but Kuittinen did have this to say on its development. “you couldn’t have made such investments as an independent studio”.

Source HERE