New PlayStation Shooter Game is Going Viral

Summary

Hypercharge: Unboxed became the #5 best-selling new PS game.
Developers chose not to focus on sales, finding success in creating a game they love.
Despite lacking online players, the game’s message resonated with fans, boosting sales.

New PlayStation shooter Hypercharge: Unboxed has gone viral, and for a rather unusual reason. After initially struggling to find its footing on the PlayStation 4 and 5, Toy Story-esque shooter Hypercharge: Unboxed has since surged to become the #5 best-selling new release on PlayStation.

With a number of well-established brands dominating the majority of shooter releases, it can be difficult for new games to find a foothold. Games like LawBreakers, Concord, Battleborn, and most recently, XDefiant have struggled and shut down as a result. One might expect a similar fate for a game like Hypercharge: Unboxed, but the honesty and positivity shown by its developers changed everything.

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Hypercharge: Unboxed, which originally launched on PC and Switch back in 2020, was ported to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on May 30. While Hypercharge has received positive reviews, its online playerbase has dwindled, and PlayStation gamers quickly realized that there weren’t many people ever online to play with. A player complained on Twitter about not being able to find enough players to even fill a lobby, with the player accusing the developers of being “lazy” and “incompetent” and pushing it on PlayStation as a cash grab. While some developers would ignore the comment or become aggressive towards the user, instead, the developers shared an open and honest message with the audience that propelled the game up the ranks to temporarily appear as the fifth-best selling new release on PlayStation.

Initially, the official Twitter account for the game responded by saying that while the game lacked “thousands of players online,” the devs were satisfied with the notion that someone was having fun out there playing local split-screen, and that if it was all the game ever achieved, the team would be content. A full statement a day later went into further detail, explaining that while the sales accomplishments of major AAA games are admirable, Hypercharge: Unboxed has a tiny developer team of five people with a smaller budget. The team went on, expressing that they felt “rich” by making a game they love, and creating a game they wanted as children. They already felt successful with the game, and noted that the title would never be made free-to-play relying on microtransactions, even if it meant the game would miss out on “millions of players.”

It seems that this message really resonated with fans, wracking up over 650,000 views, and many positive and supportive comments from readers. In a talk with Polygon, the head marketer for Hypercharge, Joe Henson, explained that the team had never anticipated this and are genuinely touched. Though the game has slipped off the bestseller list since, its sudden rise in sales on PlayStation may help to boost the title’s popularity overall, especially since Hypercharge: Unboxed features crossplay.