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Compare the marketing campaigns for Hellblade 2 to God of War: Ragnarok, published by PlayStation and deservedly plastered across each and every billboard around my hometown of Manchester, or similarly Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2, which saw one-to-one scale sculptures across the globe, Ninja Theory’s latest game was instead set up for a modest launch.
At the risk of being glib, Hellblade 2’s most effective marketing campaign was Xbox’s closures of Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin. The attention that Ninja Theory’s game received in the run up to this was criminally low, especially for a game that could have defined the Xbox Series as a generation of consoles. It looks and plays fantastic, though you can read more about the gameplay in our review, and it’s a beacon of all of the shining qualities that “Exclusive” titles demand: a unique IP, ground-breaking visuals, and a powerful idea driving it forward. It seems odd then that Xbox had seemingly neglected the game all the way up until six days ago, when a recap trailer was launched for the original title. Before that, Ninja Theory blew up on Twitter thanks to a generally shared consensus of fear for the studio, and it received plenty of attention thanks to the context of the wider gaming industry.
This virtually invisible marketing campaign from Xbox doesn’t give the impression that they’re committing to Ninja Theory’s Hellblade series, despite the fact that it’s really the last beacon of hope for showing off the Xbox Series X’s capabilities. Similarly, the studio’s ominous pre-launch tweet could easily have been read as an admission of defeat at first glance. Less so in the meaning of its words, but more in the context of its appearance. An image with a block of text posted to Twitter always spells trouble, and in the wake of Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog’s closures, it was certainly fresh in everyone’s mind.
Earlier on in April, Polygon reported that Ninja Theory’s founder, Tameem Antoniades, was no longer with the studio, which had been confirmed by an Xbox spokesperson and later the founder himself. According to Antoniades, the reason for his departure was mutual, and he had very kind words for Microsoft, too. He’d stayed on for two years after Hellblade to ensure that the studio “foundations were in place to fulfil [their] mission,” and then left with the game in the hands of three creative leads – Dan Attwell, Mark Slater-Turnstill, and David Garcia. It’s not clear when exactly Antoniades left Ninja Theory, though it was only discovered a few weeks before the launch of Hellblade 2.
The reason I bring all this up is not because this is an investigative news story connecting conjectural dots to form a crazy conspiracy about Xbox. No, instead this is an opinion piece relaying my thoughts that Xbox’s closure of its surrounding studios has put an immense pressure on Hellblade 2 to perform well above its expectations. Hi-Fi Rush, for example, one of the few successful Xbox exclusives to launch on the Xbox Series X|S, had its studio shut down and the entire IP is now laid waste. What’s worse is that in the following days, Xbox’s statements underplayed the success of the game with phenomenally out of touch responses.
When asked if the success of a game should ensure the safety of a studio by Bloomberg’s Dina Bass, Sarah Bond, President of Xbox, said “one of the things I really love about the games industry is it’s a creative art form…what success is for each game studio is also really unique.” Personally, I’d quite like to have known what metric of success was used to evaluate Tango Gameworks’ closure. She continued, “we look at each studio and game team…but it all comes back to our long-term commitment to the games we create and the devices we build…and ensuring that we’re setting ourselves up to deliver on those promises.” If you’ve seen the interview, you probably would have noticed the heavy emphasis on ourselves.
For me, the reason Hi Fi Rush was deemed a ‘failure’ was not because it lacked quality or innovation, but because it was not a trite live-service title designed to hook people into triple-figure Game Pass hours. Hi Fi Rush failed because it was a good game, but it wasn’t designed for Game Pass. The system is designed for games with expected play hours surpassing triple figures. It’s games like Ark: Survival Ascend, Dead by Daylight, and NBA 2K24. If you’re a smaller game, perhaps without the infinite replayability hacked in with DLCs, Battlepasses, and microtransactions, you’re going to struggle to meet the play hours that will deem you a Game Pass success in Microsoft’s eyes.
This is going to be a huge issue for Hellblade 2, a game that is now being criticised for its four to six hour playtime. Xbox’s disappointing marketing campaign has not done enough of the legwork to put the game onto people’s consoles, and now that it’s launched directly onto Game Pass, it’s going to need an astronomical volume of players to be profitable there. The fact that it’s so short is also a major factor; people will know this, and will be hesitant to splash out on the £50 price-tag for such a short experience.
I am really worried for Ninja Theory. We know that Xbox’s metrics for success have nothing to do with creativity, fulfilment, and enjoyability, but it’s instead the ability to turn astronomical profits and longevity. Hellblade 2 is clearly a passion project with an artistic vision, and that terrifies me even more than Senua’s psychological horror.
