Saros is selling worse than Returnal, analyst estimates, as it competes with hits like Crimson Desert and Resident Evil Requiem for limited time and money

The end of last month saw the arrival of Saros, the grim sci-fi follow-up to Returnal from Housemarque. Another tough-as-nails roguelike, some sales data reveals it's not launched quite as strongly as its predecessor, but that's partly due to the current lay of the land.

On Twitter, Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, gives a bit of insight into the game's performance thus far. He estimates it's sold over 300,000 copies in two weeks, almost a third of which were pre-orders, generating over $22 million in revenue.

According to the firm's numbers, it's lagging behind Returnal, but although that may sound negative given there are now 11-times the amount of PlayStation 5s in the world, the console's library offers a great deal of variety now compared to 2021. "When Returnal hit in April 2021, less than six months after the PS5 launch, those early PS5 adopters (the ones who inherently buy a lot of new games at full price) were dying for something to play," he writes.

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"Returnal was the first big first-party PlayStation release since launch, and it made amazing use of the unique DualSense haptics and spatial audio," Elliott explains. "Many core PS5 players flocked to it almost by default."

Now, some five years into the system's life, there's a laundry list of great blockbuster releases. Several arrived within the last 12 months, in fact. Saros "launched not too long after Crimson Desert, Resident Evil Requiem, Hades 2 on PS5, Pragmata, and a whole bunch of rad 2026 games," he points out.

Elliott notes that Saros "is a more niche" game compared to Ghost of Yotei or a new God of War. It's not an established IP or an open-world action-adventure. It's stylish but frequently grueling, and even having Rahul Kohli in the lead role doesn't make that an easier sell to many players.

These returns are still disappointing, Elliott says, and "it will struggle to break even" against the purported budget exceeding $76 million. If there's one saving grace, however, it's that Saros has already outsold Marathon on PS5. Gotta take your victories where you can, whether selling video games or battling aliens on Carcosa.

Saros trophy list includes an unexpected tribute to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.