By all accounts, Harmony has landed with a heady thud.

The team-based shooter is one in all a scant few new first-party PlayStation video games that is popping out this yr. Sony launched it on each PS5 and PC on August 23. The corporate would not usually reveal detailed participant numbers for its personal platforms. Nonetheless, Steam does. The numbers there will not be fairly.

A Steam participant depend is not totally reflective of a sport’s success, Nonetheless, it’s a key knowledge level from which we are able to extrapolate some assumptions. In its first weekend, Harmony failed to interrupt 700 concurrent gamers on Steam. That is a dismal determine for a fairly high-profile launch, particularly one from a serious writer.

For perspective, Galaxy Burger, an indie cooking sim I would by no means heard of that got here out on the identical day, had greater than 4 instances the variety of concurrent gamers on Steam (469) as Harmony (104) at one level on Wednesday. So far as a comparability for a supposed blockbuster from this yr goes, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League peaked at greater than 13,400 simultaneous gamers on Steam. That co-op sport was a infamous flop that led to a $200 million loss for Warner Bros. Discovery.

As well as, Harmony has amassed 444 critiques on Steam on the time of writing. Some analysts estimate that every Steam evaluation interprets to between 30 and 50 gross sales. On the higher finish of the dimensions, that may put Harmony‘s quantity of gross sales on Steam at round 22,000.

We do not have a powerful concept of the gross sales numbers on PlayStation simply but, however as a thought train, as an instance thrice as many individuals have purchased Harmony on PS5 to this point. At 40 bucks a pop and a speculative whole of 88,000 items bought, that may put Harmony‘s gross income at round $3.5 million (that is earlier than the minimize Valve takes of Steam purchases). That might not remotely come near masking the event and advertising and marketing prices for a sport that took Firewalk Studios (which Sony purchased final yr) eight years to make. So yeah, Harmony has all of the indicators of being a catastrophe.

There are a bunch of the reason why Harmony simply hasn’t grabbed individuals’s consideration. I performed just a few rounds throughout the open beta and thought it was so-so. The fight is okay and among the core concepts — equivalent to a cool, lore-filled map — are attention-grabbing, however it felt like there was not sufficient novelty.

The primary wave of characters is bland, which isn’t superb for a hero shooter when Apex Legends and Overwatch 2 (vastly extra in style rival titles which are free-to-play) every have dozens of distinct, partaking personalities for followers to attach with. The affect of Guardians of the Galaxy is keenly felt, for higher or worse, which makes it appear much more like Firewalk and Sony are chasing after developments that had been in style in 2016.

The largest mistake of all seems to be the value level. With gamers in a position to entry so many related video games with out paying a penny, having to shell out $40 for Harmony was evidently not an attractive proposition for the overwhelming majority of PS5 and PC homeowners.

It is not utterly unattainable that we’ll see a outstanding No Man’s Sky-type turnaround. However the stage seems set for Harmony to swiftly hit PlayStation Plus to juice up the participant base, then going free-to-play at a later date similar to many different live-service video games earlier than it.

And but, Harmony appears to solely be the one actual bitter be aware on what’s really been a quietly robust yr for PlayStation general to this point.

The Sony-published Helldivers 2 is the second-best promoting sport within the US to this point this yr, in line with trade analysts at Circana. Solely School Soccer 25 has bought extra copies within the nation. In reality, Helldivers 2 is the fastest-selling sport Sony has ever put out, with greater than 12 million copies bought in its first 12 weeks.

Opting to launch the sport on PS5 and PC concurrently paid off, as many of the preliminary wave of gross sales got here by way of Steam, per analysts. Nonetheless, the Steam participant depend has dropped off considerably in latest months, partly due to a controversial account-linking requirement.

Stellar Blade, one other Sony-published sport from a third-party studio, acquired a usually optimistic response from critics and it’s doing properly commercially too. Developer Shift Up estimated that gross sales topped 1 million items inside the first two months and mentioned in June {that a} PC port was into consideration because of this.

Sony’s technique of bringing its main exclusives to PC within the years following their PlayStation debut has been paying off over the previous couple of years. It is launched two considerably older video games on Steam this yr within the type of Horizon Forbidden West and Ghost of Tsushima. Each are glorious, devoted ports that carry out properly on my high-end PC in addition to my Steam Deck. They had been profitable sales-wise too, with the previous cracking the listing of the highest 10 best-selling video games within the US in its first week. Ghost topped the general US sport gross sales charts for Might general, per Circana, simply after Stellar Blade did the identical factor in April.

Sony has a minimum of two extra blockbuster PC ports on the best way this yr. God of Conflict: Ragnarök will hit that platform on September 19. The earlier sport bought greater than 2.5 million items on PC as of final February, per the foremost Insomniac leak, so the sequel appears primed to do properly too. The Till Daybreak remake is coming to PC and PS5 simply a few weeks later.

After which there’s the small matter of The Final of Us Half 2 Remastered, which arrived on PS5 earlier this yr with an awesome new roguelike mode included. There is not any PC launch date but, however TLOU Day (Naughty Canine’s annual celebration of the sequence on September 26) is quick approaching. That looks like a first-rate alternative for an announcement forward of the second season of the HBO adaptation debuting in 2025.

A cautious method appears smart for Half 2. Sony will wish to be certain that the PC port has nothing just like the sorts of technical points Half 1 had when it arrived on that platform, so giving builders as a lot time as they want for polish is vital.

Sony even has a pair extra first-party video games lined up for the final chunk of the yr. It may not have to attend lengthy to clean off the stink of Harmony because the extremely anticipated and utterly lovely platformer Astro Bot lands on PS5 on September 6. Lego Horizon Adventures — a extra family-friendly tackle the Horizon sequence — is headed to PS5, PC and Nintendo Change in a notable multi-platform debut this vacation season.

After which there’s the {hardware} aspect of the equation. Within the first half of the calendar yr, Sony bought slightly below 7 million PS5s. That’s down from 9.3 million over the identical interval in 2023, however a dip’s to be anticipated at this level within the system’s life cycle.

How the PS5 stacks up towards the competitors tells a much bigger story. Though Microsoft has lengthy saved quiet about what number of Xboxes it is promoting, earlier this yr some analysts pegged the ratio of PS5 to Xbox Collection X/S gross sales at greater than 5 to at least one. Yeesh. Given Sony’s bigger set up base, it’s little surprise why Microsoft is more and more desperate to deliver its first-party video games to PlayStation.

In the meantime, at first look, the PlayStation Portal appeared like an edge-case peripheral for the diehards. All it does is allow you to play video games from your individual PS5 remotely with out even supporting Sony’s cloud gaming service.

Nonetheless, the Portal has confirmed to be a shocking hit. Sony mentioned the system, which was usually bought out for months, exceeded its expectations. It is the best-selling video games accent to this point this yr by greenback quantity, in line with Circana. And rumors are swirling that Sony is “paying very shut consideration to the present handheld market,” maybe suggesting that the corporate is lastly able to work on a correct Vita/PSP successor. One can hope.

Even the beleaguered PS VR2 appears to have had an upturn in fortunes after a latest sale and the discharge of a dongle that lets homeowners use it to play digital actuality video games on PC. In keeping with one report, the lower cost led to a sudden 2,350 % spike in gross sales. Sony might have even bought extra items in a single day (July 28) than it did within the earlier seven months general, in line with The Shortcut. Reviews counsel that PS VR2 gross sales have been disappointing for Sony, however such a pointy improve (or something near it) could be astonishing. Together with the low cost, the additional utility of with the ability to use the headset for PC gaming certainly helped, because the precise PS VR2 video games library stays pretty small.

There’s one different piece of {hardware} that might make 2024 much more of a barnburner for Sony: the extensively rumored PS5 Professional. For months, leaks have been suggesting {that a} mid-generation refresh is coming this vacation season. Rumors level to the PS5 Professional with the ability to ship larger speeds, sooner sport rendering, improved graphics, higher ray-tracing efficiency and an 8K efficiency mode. Provided that Microsoft’s new Xbox variants both add inner storage, change the field’s colour or take away a disc drive, the PS5 Professional might appear to be an excellent tastier choice for current-gen holdouts.