Finnish studio Housemarque, maker of modern classic shoot 'em ups Resogun and Nex Machina, is moving away from developing arcade games due to poor sales.
Housemarque CEO and co-founder Ilari Kuittinen spoke about the decision to move away from the genre they love, regardless of their games' quality, in a letter to fans.
"Despite critical success and numerous awards, our games just haven’t sold in significant numbers," Kuittinen said. "While some of them have reached a massive audience due to free game offerings across various digital sales channels, this unfortunately doesn’t help pay for development, which gets costly for high production quality."
So the studio is abandoning its arcade shooter roots to move onto new genres.
"While this genre will always hold a special place in our hearts, the industry is moving more toward multiplayer experiences with strong, robust communities, and it’s time for Housemarque to move forward with the industry," he said, noting Nex Machina and Matterfall will be the last of their kind from the studio.
"Looking ahead to our next projects, we are exploring something totally different than what you might expect of us, but we believe this will lead to the creation of even more engaging gaming experiences," he said.
"Our core values remain the same - gameplay first with first class execution. We are really excited about our new projects and look forward to unveiling our first game from the new era of Housemarque," he continued.
Housemarque has been preparing to make this transition for some time, as they have been working on their next project for over a year according to an interview with Gamesindustry.biz.
For more on Housemarque's final entries in the arcade shooter genre, check out IGN's Nex Machina Review and IGN's review of Matterfall.
Brian Barnett is an IGN Freelance Writer. He has been a massive fan of Housemarque games, so he's disappointed in this news. You can commiserate with him on Twitter @Ribnax.
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