Chinese action title Phantom Blade Zero already appears to be outperforming massive games like Gears of War: E-Day and Control Resonant on Steam, despite still being days from release.
That’s according to sales data scrutinised by Alinea Analytics head of market analysis Rhys Elliott, who posted their findings on LinkedIn. Based on Elliott’s estimates, Phantom Blade Zero has already sold 500,000 copies on Steam through pre-orders, bringing in roughly $24m in revenue ahead of its launch next week. Elliott noted the figures meant Phantom Blade Zero was “outperforming” Gears of War: E-Day and Control Resonant on Steam at the time of writing, and that China is currently its top market.
Other interesting tidbits include the fact that Phantom Blade Zero has also generated a lofty 2.5m Steam wishlists. According to Elliott, 41 percent of players who’ve wishlisted the game have also played Black Myth Wukong, while 38 percent of them have played Elden Ring and 28 percent played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
It’s an impressive start for Phantom Blade Zero on PC, and Elliott goes on to say that “pre-launch signals” point to the game being popular on PS5 too. He even goes as far as to suggest it has the “potential to be one of the year’s breakout single-player hits.”
These figures emerge at a time China’s games industry is enjoying a boom, and an increasing number of releases from Chinese developers are launching to critical and commercial success worldwide. Phantom Blade Zero has all the signs of becoming another hit it launches for PS5 and PC on 28th October.
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Phantom Blade 0
An internal trailer for the cancelled Mass Effect game that was in-development at BioWare prior to its closure this week has appeared online. It’s confirmed to be real, too, amid some initial suspicions it may have been an AI generated fake.
The trailer was intended for internal use, and was created for EA leadership rather than the public. It starts with a short message: “The following is in-engine footage from our small team. It uses our pre-production assets.”
The trailer shows us our first (and likely only) look at Mass Effect Universe, an entirely new entry following the adventures of a new protagonist. We see them navigate the galaxy in their own ship with a new crew of various known races including a Krogan, and get into fights using guns and biotics. There’s some quick cuts to a saucy romance scene, a tense standoff with weapons drawn, and a mysterious creature being researched in a big test tube. We also see a returning character from the original trilogy – Liara – make an appearance near the end of the trailer before a big bar fight kicks off.
When first released, scepticism around whether this trailer was real naturally was present given the prevalence of AI, however IGN quickly verified its validity. In addition, Bloomberg’s Jason Schrier went on to corroborate the trailer’s authenticity on his personal BlueSky account.
We know very little about this game aside from this trailer. According to a former BioWare employee, Mass Effect Universe would have learned from Baldur’s Gate 3 and The Witcher to deliver “a level of autonomy and choice that no other game has.” The game would have also seemingly “remained true” to the original trilogy.
Reactions from this trailer are bittersweet, given the reality that the 50 developers working on Mass Effect Universe have recently lost their jobs as part of EA’s layoffs which impacted 400 employees across the company. “A spy thriller is such a cool concept for a re-entry to the series,” wrote Reddit user Harrywilko. “Man, I’m just so sad and angry.” User TerraxFormer shared similar sentiments, writing: “God this makes me even more distraught lol. I know a trailer is not an indication of how good it would have been but I was looking forward to this damn game so much.”
The EA job cuts, which took place only a few months after Saudi Arabia’s $55bn leveraged buyout of the company, also hit developers at Respawn, Maxis, Full Circle, EA Motive, and other EA-owned studios. While such cuts were anticipated by experts given EA’s new debt obligations, the news of BioWare’s closure nonetheless drew out many messages of sympathy and anger from across the industry.
It’s hardly a silver lining, given we saw this unfinished trailer while we all said a sad farewell to BioWare. But at least those staff can know they were onto something that could have been great.
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Mass Effect 5
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