Returnal Dev Thanks Sony for Letting It Work on Something 'Very Risky'

Returnal launches tomorrow exclusively on PlayStation 5 and Housemarque co-founder and CEO, Ilari Kuittinen, has written a heartfelt blog post thanking Sony for its support on the game. The blog post, which was published on Housemarque's site, details the struggles of getting to tomorrow's launch day for Returnal, a game with a history that spans back six years to the initial concept's beginning. After Nex Machina, which Kuittinen writes was one of the best reviewed new games of 2017 on Metacritic, had "disappointing" sales numbers, he published the studio's now infamous #arcadeisdead post. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/29/returnal-review"] This post detailed that the studio was "ending (its) long standing commitment to the arcade genre," but Kuittinen says that didn't mean the team was giving up on its "deep commitment to fast-twitch action gameplay." In steps Returnal, which Kuittinen says is the team's attempt to translate its "arcade 2D gameplay expertise into a [third-person] action game." "It was still very uncertain if we'd be able to move past the prototype phase and convince Sony to keep on funding a new, unproved concept [Returnal]," Kuittinen wrote. "The concept was ridiculously ambitious and looking back, we as a company really weren't totally appreciating the challenge ahead of us and how hard it could be to tackle it." "In the age when game publishers are taking less and less creative risks, we are truly thankful to our publishing partner Sony, who has given us an opportunity to work on something very risky and has given fantastic support during the whole project. We are forever grateful for having this opportunity." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=returnal-playstation-5-screenshots&captions=true"] Kuittinen then writes about the difficulty of shipping a game like Returnal, which he says is a game bigger and "more ambitious than the company has ever delivered." Kuittinen also mentions developing a game for an entirely new platform — the PS5 — and the COVID-19 pandemic that began in Returnal's last year of development. You can read more about that and the history Kuittinen details that led to where Housemarque is today in the full blog post. Returnal launches tomorrow exclusively for the PS5. You can read our thoughts on the game in IGN's Returnal review. Check out Returnal's launch trailer after that and then read about what each edition of the game comes with when it's released tomorrow. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.