What have been you as much as on Friday night time? Effectively, Harmony gamers have been busy watching it go offline in the meanwhile following an error message which signaled the race to seize its platinum trophy was up.
Since we realized that the sport can be disappearing into the ether, there’s been lots of chatter about whether or not Harmony will truly return sooner or later, with one trade analyst having known as the sport’s present state of play an “unprecedented scenario”.
Again when the information of Harmony’s impending shutdown arrived, Circana govt director Mat Piscatella mentioned he thinks what’s occurring to the Sony shooter is fairly distinctive. “What’s occurring with Harmony is unprecedented,” he wrote on Bluesky (thanks, IGN). “I am seeing people pointing to Anthem as a comp, and… no. Anthem was the best-selling sport of its February 2019 launch month, and was the fifteenth best-selling sport of that 12 months, and might nonetheless be performed at the moment.”
With reference to its potential return, he added: “On the one hand, the sport and the IP have been simply so soundly rejected of it that one might imagine it unsalvageable. Alternatively, so few know concerning the sport that maybe it could possibly be introduced again with a unique mannequin and a major refresh. I feel that is an unprecedented scenario, with all choices on the desk, so anybody’s guess might be nearly as good as mine.”
Naturally, one of many choices that is been tabled in lots of locations is a returning Harmony being free-to-play, with the concept being that by eradicating the standard buy-in requirement, a revamped model of the sport would possibly be capable to higher the low participant counts it suffered from following its preliminary launch. Although there’s clearly a debate available as as to if that step would clear up all of — or sufficient of — the sport’s points to gas the type of resurgence PlayStation can be in search of.
What’s occurring with Harmony is unprecedented.
I am seeing people pointing to Anthem as a comp, and… no.
Anthem was the best-selling sport of its Feb 2019 launch month, and was the fifteenth best-selling sport of that 12 months, and might nonetheless be performed at the moment.
— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) Sep 3, 2024 at 7:01 PM
As we wrote in our evaluation of Harmony: “There’s a superb sport below all of the rubble and perplexing enterprise choices (akin to not giving it out in PS Plus Further), however why do you have to put up with all these frustrations when the sport doesn’t a have distinct identification and there are higher options out there without cost proper now?”
Amid all of this chatter, the sport has managed to realize a good quantity of consideration as a meme, or reasonably a factor that individuals on the web have lined as much as gossip about on account of its weird circumstances. A symptom of this was a Morbius-inspired Change.org petition dubbed “We Have been All Busy That Week – Please Launch Harmony Once more”.
Whereas it’s clearly a joke, it is also managed to go from a paltry 25 signatures after we initially lined it final week, to simply wanting 2,000 as of writing – 1,934 to be actual. Who is aware of whether or not any of these folks truly care about enjoying Harmony, however the petition’s definitely gained extra traction in simply 5 days that I assumed it will.
Would you – both genuinely or sarcastically – prefer to see Harmony come again in some type? Tell us under!
