The latest Saints Row game has been on the market for around a month, and thus far, the reaction hasn’t been great. The game currently holds a 64 on OpenCritic, with user reviews being even lower. A lack of polish, innovation in the open-world space, or the wildness that defined past entries in the series have left a lot of folks cold. But what about the Saints Row overlords at Embracer Group? Are they happy? Saints Row did place fairly high in the August sales rankings, coming in at #2 on the NPD charts, but given the lack of new releases last month, that doesn’t necessarily mean that much.
Well, Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors recently addressed investors, and he didn’t seem thrilled with the Saints Row reception (thanks to Axios’ Stephen Totilo for transcribing the comments).
“Personally I had hoped for a greater reception of the game. It’s been a very polarized view. There is a lot of things that could be said and details around it. I’m happy to see a lot of gamers and fans happy. At the same time I’m a bit sad to see also fans not happy. It’s difficult.”
Despite the mixed reception, Wingefors does believe Saints Row will make money, but not as much as they were hoping for.
“I’m confident we will make money on the investment. Will it have as great a return of investment that we have seen in many other games? Not very likely, but we will make money and that’s a good starting point.”
As for what this might mean for the future of Saints Row, Wingefors hedges his bets a bit, but at the very least it sounds like a rethink of the franchise is in order…
“Obviously you always want every installment of any IP to be greater than the last one, but what you do is…evaluate your position, the outcome… and there [are] hundreds of people engaged in this game in the group. I still have a great trust in those people, and I am sure they will recommend things for the future.”
Saints Row is available now on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and Stadia.
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