Saros is Sony’s first big 2026 exclusive. Its performance so far has been a little slow, but this is a niche game, and the context around its launch matters.

Let’s dig in.

Saros hit PS5 on 30 April, with an advanced access period kicking off two days earlier. It’s a PS5 exclusive, and rumour has it that it’ll stay that way. In the two weeks since launch, Saros has passed 300K copies sold and generated over $22M in revenue.

Almost a third of those copies came during the early-access period, which suggests that Housemarque superfans (including myself!) are propping this one up. More on that later.

Launch-aligned, our data shows Saros is actually selling a little slower than Returnal, despite there being only about 8M PS5s in the wild when Returnal launched vs the 93M install base Saros launched into.

On first look, that seems rough. But there’s a bit more to it:

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

• It’s a different story for Saros. It’s launched not too long after Crimson Desert, Resident Evil Requiem, Hades 2 on PS5, Pragmata, and a whole bunch of rad 2026 games. This is a more niche PlayStation Studios game. It was never going to do numbers like God of War or Ghost of Yotei.

• Of course, Saros is also competing with the whole cumulative backlog of PlayStation releases that have built up across the cycle. The PS5 install base is over 11x bigger than it was at Returnal’s launch, but the share of that audience actively shopping for a new niche first-party title is structurally smaller.

It really is a shame, as Saros is a fantastic game and frankly deserves better numbers than this. But 3D bullet-hell-type games, especially those with a $70+ price tag, are a tough sell in today’s market.

Particularly without a big IP behind it, or a studio that’s recognised outside of the PlayStation hardcore.

But there’s plenty to love about Saros. I’m loving it, and so are many others. It’s also already sold more copies than Marathon on PS5, so there’s that.

Players who consistently show up for PlayStation’s other first-party games at launch – or shortly after – make up a significant share of Saros’ early players:

• 56% of Saros‘ players previously played Ghost of Yotei (released in October 2025).

• 37% played Death Stranding 2 (released last June).

• 11% played God of War: Ghost of Sparta (a February 2026 shadow-drop).

• And 8% played Marathon (early March).

The Housemarque fandom also showed up in full force. Our audience overlap data shows that about 78% of Saros‘ players previously played Returnal. Of course, Returnal has been on PS Plus, inflating lifetime crossover numbers. Much of the genuine overlap will be early Returnal buyers rather than subscription samplers, though.

Looking at our monthly player-overlap data on PlayStation (yes, we have that!), we can see that around 17% of Saros‘ April players also played Returnal that month. I was part of that group, getting the homework in (and my arse kicked).

Many of those first-three-days Saros buyers in April also bought and played plenty of other new and recent games in April, including April 17th’s Pragmata (33% played), March 20th’s Crimson Desert (30%), and 14 April’s Hades 2 (14% played).

This is the cross-shopping reality for niche first-party releases in 2026. Wallets and time are finite, and the PlayStation hardcore is having an incredibly busy spring. I’m bloody exhausted, myself – in a good way.

The DAU data is where things get a bit more encouraging. Saros launched with around 43K daily players on its early-access day (29 April), then jumped to 83K on its full-launch day (30 April), and peaked at almost 142K on 2 May.

The post-launch curve has held up well, too, with DAUs settling into a 115K-140K range across the first 10 days, only dipping below 100K once (11 May, at 96K).

That’s a healthier engagement curve than the unit sales would suggest, and it points to something important. The players who did buy Saros are sticking with it (more on that later).

The playtime and completion data back that up as well. Our estimates show that 40% of Saros players have played for over 15 hours, and 30% for over 20 hours. That is pretty impressive engagement for a roguelike of this difficulty profile, only two weeks into release.

Speaking of difficulty, the decision to make Saros more accessible than Returnal means completion rates are higher than you’d expect, too. Right now, over 20% of Saros players have finished the game (based on the Act 3 trophy completion).

That’s double Returnal’s completion rate at this point, in part because Returnal runs were looooooong and the checkpoint structure punished mid-run drop-off in a way Saros doesn’t. But mostly because Returnal is damn hard (one of my proudest platinums to be honest – had to squeeze that one in, didn’t I!?)

This is the silver lining in the data. Saros obviously isn’t pulling in casual PlayStation owners at the scale Sony and Housemarque might have hoped, but the audience that did show up is playing the hell out of it.

That’s the audience that recommends games to friends, drives organic word-of-mouth, and converts at higher rates when the game eventually goes on sale or hits PS Plus.

Saros is an absolutely fantastic game and truly unique in terms of its gameplay and systems. This slow start suggests it will struggle to break even, given the reported $76M development budget.

But at the same time, exclusives sell consoles, and then inertia from previous generations does the rest, and the real PlayStation money is made on third-party launches and legacy third-party live services. Plenty of core PlayStation players have picked up Saros, which is the underlying job an exclusive is meant to do.

That said, there is a useful counter-data point worth flagging. Returnal is approaching $13M in gross revenue on Steam, and almost $5M of that happened in the port’s first month on Valve’s store.

That’s a PlayStation exclusive that arrived on PC roughly two years after its console launch, and is still generating meaningful incremental revenue four-and-a-bit years after release.

Returnal has a decent revenue tail on Steam, suggesting that Saros has a real long-term revenue case on PC relative to its budget.

As mentioned, Sony will inevitably find new revenue and players via PlayStation Store discounts and its eventual PS Plus inclusion. But if revenue is the priority on this one for Sony, this fantastic game has sadly had a lukewarm start, as per our estimates.

The broader point Saros’ launch underlines is one we’ve been making for a while in this newsletter. The PlayStation hardcore is an extraordinarily valuable audience, but it’s a finite one, and Sony’s first-party release cadence is increasingly bumping up against the limits of that audience’s wallet share.

Niche exclusives now compete not just with other niche exclusives, but with the cumulative backlog of every previous Sony hit, plus the cross-platform releases the hardcore is also buying.

The elephant in the room is that Sony recently closed Bluepoint. Now that Housemarque has presumably closed the book on Saros, I sincerely hope PlayStation keeps them on the books.

Like Bluepoint, Housemarque are some incredibly talented folks.

Next week, we’ll be covering the release of Forza Horizon 6 across Steam and Xbox. On Steam alone, it’s already sold almost 1.2M copies and generated over $62M in revenue, and the game isn’t even out until 18 May (15 May in advanced access).

This one is going to be big. Hit subscribe below if you want that analysis in your inbox next week, for free.

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[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]