The CEO of Embracer asserted that he hoped for a better response to the game, but is confident that it will be lucrative.
The Chief exec of Deep Silver’s parent company, Embracer Group, admitted today that the recent Saints Row(opens in new tab) reboot fell well short of his expectations, but that his long-term viewpoint on the series remains unchanged.
When Saints Row arrived in August, it landed with a clunk. Bugs were a big problem, and even before the game was released there have been predictable people complaining that the new crew was also too young, hip, and/or diverse. Being an Epic Games Store exclusive probably didn’t help it gain word-of-mouth exposure on PC when it happened to come out. The game’s Epic Games Store page has a 3.8/5 “Epic Player Rating,” which also praises it as “Extremely Fun” and “Strongly Recommended,” but it also has a “Weak” OpenCritic rating gathered from publications like IGN, Game Informer, and PC Gamer.
The real issue, even so, is a surplus of restraint in comparison to previous Saints Row games. Perhaps an inevitable turn of events for a series built on successive excesses (the final boss of Saints Row 4: Gat Out of Hell was basically Satan), but still an issue for a franchise that established the term “dildo bat.”
(As a reminder, a 60% rank isn’t bad on PC Gamer’s review scale: “There’s something to like, but it can only be suggested with major provisos.”
“Saints Row is always at its best when it can let loose, whenever it goes into full dubstep-gun stupid, and the reboot commonly forgets that. When it remembers, you get things like a storyline in which you partake in a city-wide LARP, having to fight Mad Max roleplayers with foam weapons while dressed in cardboard armor, and that’s the kind of foolishness it might benefit from more of “Jody authored a letter.
During today’s modern annual general meeting(opens in new tab) of Embracer Group, the quiet gaming behemoth(opens in new tab) that owns Saints Row developer Volition and publisher Plain (formerly Koch Media) among many other studios, CEO Lars Wingefors did admit that he’d hoped for something better.
“Obviously, I had hoped for a good reception of the game,” Wingefors clarified. “It’s been a very polarized point of view, and there are numerous things that could be said and details nearby it, but I’m pleased to see a lot of gamers and fans happy. At the same time, I’m unimpressed to see that fans are displeased. It’s tricky.”
Saints Row is still “reasonably early in [its] release window,” as per Wingefors, and more bug fixes and new content are in the direction. The overall sales performance of the game will be clearer following the company’s quarterly financial report in November, but he is convinced that it will finally make money.
“Would it provide the same high investment return as many other games? Very improbable, “Wingefors explained. “But we’ll make money, and that’s a good place to begin.
Despite the reboot’s faults, Wingefors said “no” when asked if the poor reception had changed his opinion about the Saints Row series’ long-term future. So I still have a lot mo”[There is] a lengthy procedure for assessing your position and the outcomes, and re faith in those people, and I’m certain they’ll make guidance in the future.”
And, intriguingly, during the Q&A component of the presentation, he implied that even in the best of times, the Saints Row series is not a great moneymaker, presumably because of its relatively high capital costs: “We all know that Saints Row, for example, is one of the toughest ones in terms of ROI. That’s a considerable distance behind us now, and then we’ll make money.”
