At the yearly DICE Summit in Las Vegas, where Returnal won two awards for Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition and Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design, a few key Housemarque developers participated at a roundtable with journalists. GamesBeat transcribed the conversation where Housemarque Managing Director Ilari Kuittinen revealed that the studio is now working on a new IP, though he didn't share any further details on the project.
We had our stint working on multiplayer games, because a few years back it seemed like you needed to have some kind of multiplayer experience. We tried that, and we really didn’t do it as well. But it’s early days with us starting a new game, a new IP, concepting it out. We’ll see what comes with that.
In the first half of his statement, Kuittinen refers to the now-defunct Stormdivers, which was the company's focus for a while as it transitioned away from its trademark arcade games (Dead Nation, Resogun, Alienation, Nex Machina, Matterfall). Stormdivers was meant to be the first live service game made by Housemarque. In this sci-fi Battle Royale title, players descended on an abandoned island where a dangerous nano-experiment-gone-wrong had created a permanent artificial storm system that devoured everything in sight.
The game didn't catch on amidst the sea of Battle Royale games that littered the market back then, so Housemarque pivoted to the triple-A project that turned out to be Returnal. The rest, as they say, is history; the game was so successful and critically acclaimed that its publisher Sony decided to buy the Finnish company shortly afterward.
Housemarque might be about to get many more awards at the upcoming BAFTA Games ceremony, by the looks of the nominations. Returnal is listed in the fight for eight prizes (Best Game, Artistic Achievement, Audio Achievement, Game Design, Music, Narrative, Original Property, and Technical Achievement).
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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