Housemarque is renowned for its arcade shooters, garnering tons of critical acclaim for Resogun at the PS4’s launch and once again with the recent Nex Machina. However, poor sales for its games overall has caused the company to work on something “totally different”. To that end, it will no longer be making arcade games.

In an official blog post titled “Arcade is dead”, Housemarque CEO Ilari Kuittinen talks about how the studio’s games have not been selling well despite strong critical acclaim and various awards. “Our games have received great critical reception over the years, perhaps the best example being Nex Machina. However despite critical success and numerous awards, our games just haven’t sold in significant numbers.

“While some of them have reached a massive audience due to free game offerings across various digital sales channels, this unfortunately doesn’t help pay for development, which gets costly for high production quality.

“Lackluster sales of Nex Machina have led us to the thinking that it is time to bring our longstanding commitment to the arcade genre to an end. While this genre will always hold a special place in our hearts, the industry is moving more toward multiplayer experiences with strong, robust communities, and it’s time for Housemarque to move forward with the industry.” Nex Machina and Matterfall will be the last arcade titles to come from the studio.

This doesn’t mean that the developer is in a crisis or anything (that we know of). It’s simply going to focus on creating other “enjoyable and memorable gaming experiences” while also developing a good work environment for its employees. Though its next project will be completely different, Housemarque thinks that it will help create “even more engaging gaming experiences.”

What could Housemarque’s next game be and when can we expect it? What are your thoughts on no more arcade titles from the storied developer? Let us know in the comments below.

Some more games have received or will be receiving updates to enable PS4 Pro support. The first is Farming Simulator 17, the game that infamously supported mods on PS4 before Fallout 4 did, whose update is already live.

There are three modes to choose from – Ultra HD which runs at 4K resolution; Quad HD which enables a 1440p resolution and 60 FPS frame rate; and HD mode, which runs the game at 1080p resolution at 60 FPS with better draw distance.

The second game is Resogun, which will be receiving its update “soon enough” according to Housemarque. Interestingly, the developer has yet to confirm what the patch will have and what visual modes will be enabled. Nevertheless, it would be fair to expect native 4K resolution support and a mode for 1080p/60 FPS.

What are your thoughts on both games receiving PS4 Pro support? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more information on other PS4 titles that will be updated.

Housemarque’s Resogun has been confirmed to release on the PlayStation 3 according to a recent PlayStation Blog post. The news was confirmed after a PEGI listing showed up, indicating the game’s release in Europe for the PS3. The game will release on December 17th in Europe and December 23rd in North America along with the PlayStation Vita version.

Unlike the PS4 version, the PS3 and Vita versions have been developed by Climax Studios. They will be available for $14.99 on both platforms but if you already own it on PS Vita, you’ll be able to download it for free on the PS3 and Vita.

Along with the ability to transfer saves, the Vita version will have the ability for ad-hoc co-op play. Will that be enough for PS3 and Vita players to take the plunge into the side-scrolling shoot ’em up? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and stay tuned for more information.

Resogun was one of the best launch titles when the PlayStation 4 launched last year, and even now, it stands as one of the most compelling experiences to be had on the system. That said, Housemarque have already confirmed that their premier, visually intensive arcade shooter will be coming over to the PlayStation Vita, but that may not be the only other place to enjoy the game if you don’t own a PS4- it appears that Resogun for the PlayStation 3 has just been rated by the European Classifications board, implying that it may be coming to the PlayStation 3 as well.

A PlayStation 3 version makes sense- while, yes, the game would see a visual downgrade, it remains the PlayStation platform with the largest install base- by not bringing the game to the system, the developers are potentially locking themselves out of an install base of 80 million users.

There has been no official announcement on the PS3 version yet. Hopefully soon.

Housemarque’s shooter Resogun has recently been rated in Europe by PEGI for the PlayStation 3, which indicates that it could release for the previous generation console in the near future. If Sony is saving the announcement for the upcoming PlayStation Experience this weekend, then it’s likely that Resogun could be available for the PS3 very soon.

Resogun first launched with the PlayStation 4 in 2013 and was hailed as the best launch title despite its indie identity. Housemarque has since added additional content to the game and even a PS Vita version, which is being handled by Climax Studios.

With all the work being done by Sony to bring previous gen releases into the current generation via HD remasters, it’s good to see the company catering to previous gen consumers with such ports. What are your thoughts on Resogun for the PS3? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more information in the coming days.

Even though Sony is pushing not one but two big shooters for the PS4, namely The Order: 1886 and Uncharted 4, President of Worldwide Studios for SCE Shuhei Yoshida believes the smaller, non-triple A titles are still important. In conversation with Games Industry International following the Gamelab conference at Barcelona, Yoshida flatly said he doesn’t understand why some gamers are only interested in blockbuster titles.

“We are concerned a little bit when we work on a game like LittleBigPlanet 3, because people want those big-budget, realistic, military shooters,” he said. “I was very happy to get a very positive reaction when we announced LittleBigPlanet 3. But there were lots of cheers, a lot of affection. And the reaction to Nintendo’s games in general, or a game like Splatoon. If you look at the whole industry, and you consider Nintendo, I think the balance is actually better than past years.”

Yoshida cites the reception to Resogun as a key point in his argument. “Not every PS Plus member downloaded it, and that’s a great, great game. That’s a key question for us. I hear complaints [about the lack of AAA games]. I do realize that some people are only interested in big-budget AAA games. I don’t really understand those people. I don’t know if they’ve tried some of the indie games and decided they’re not interested.

“Maybe they haven’t even tried. That’s a key question. Almost every week you see an indie game coming out digitally on PS4. Some of them are really, really interesting, beautiful games. We’re fortunate that they’re creating games on PS4, and some of them are choosing to launch their console versions on PlayStation first.”

Thoughts? Tell us below.

Resogun is all set to receive a new expansion next week with Heroes, but before that, you can look forward to local co-op support being added to the game this weekend. You’ll have also receive a ship editor, which should allow you to finally bring your bizarre and unholy creations to life (within Resogun that is).

The upcoming patch will also include more Trophies in the experience along with a reset of the leaderboards. Those players who managed to achieve the top spots before will be added to a new Hall of Fame leaderboard that will showcase all the high scores before the reset. It also seems that many exploits discovered earlier will have been neutralized with the new patch so you’ll need to find new ways to get those high scores.

You can check out more information on the patch over at the PlayStation Blog, courtesy of Housemarque. Meanwhile, Resogun: Heroes will release for the PS4 next week and retail for $5.

Resogun, the gorgeous indie arcade shooter title, was probably the best game available at the PlayStation 4’s launch, but it did have one issue- with just five levels available, it was also rather short. Now, Sony seems to be working on extending the life and longevity of the game: developers Housemarque announced on the PlayStation Blog that Resogun will be getting new game modes and a ship editor this month, in addition to more additional content as well.

The new modes are Survival, which is essentially an endless variation of the original mode, and Demolition, which seems to revel in causing as much destruction and demolition as possible.

There will also be a local co-op mode added to the game, and that plus the ship editor will be included in a patch that will be made available to players for free, while the extra modes will be part of a $5 expansion.

“Sounds too good to be true, but we felt like these needed to be a part of the core RESOGUN experience, so therefore patching them in for free seemed like the proper way to go,” the developers said.

If you haven’t already, download Resogun. That game’s great.

Housemarque is currently busy developing a new PlayStation 4 but it’s still focused on bringing new content for its critically acclaimed side-scrolling PS4 shooter RESOGUN.

The developer recently took to Twitter to post another teaser image for the game. Check it out below. Subtle, no?

Second official teaser for the upcoming expansion. #Resogun #DLC pic.twitter.com/XpoQxnTMAL

— Housemarque Team (@Housemarque) April 30, 2014

We still no clue what to expect at this point, and this teaser could indicate either a greater degree of difficulty, a brand new game mechanic to be employed or perhaps both. It’s hard to tell and makes us more than a little frightened while thinking about it.

RESOGUN launched with the PlayStation 4 in November and has since been earmarked as one of the best, if not the best, launch title for the new generation of consoles. Housemarque also worked on Dead Nation, which was recently ported over to the PlayStation 4 as Dead Nation: Apocalypse Edition. Stay tuned for more details on their next projects in the coming weeks.

As it turns, a lot. Resogun became the highest rated PS4 launch title and even gave competition to the Xbox One’s launch lineup. Despite its relative length, the game was beautiful, addictive and still an incredibly engrossing experience for shooter fans.

Housemarque is now busy on DLC for Resogun that is reportedly awesome. But how did it all begin? Did Housemarque wake up one day and decide to make an awesome game? Community manager Tommaso De Benetti penned an exclusive dev journal for GamingBolt in which he discusses the inspiration and development of Resogun from the concept stage, along with how the developer went about using the PS4’s power to bring it to life.

Overall development from the concept stage to code:

In the beginning there were voxels. Everything started from the technology. At the time, our Creative Director Harri Tikkanen and the tech team came up with an idea: “Wouldn’t it be cool to build a game entirely out of voxels?”. So we started working on that concept, and from that three games emerged, all based on the idea of being built with voxels. One became Resogun (interestingly enough, that has been the name for the project since the start), one became the iOS project we are currently working on (with rather drastic changes, as voxels are not the main thing anymore), and one didn’t make it out of the prototype stage.

The name “Resogun” was chosen because we wanted to make a game that would bring to mind the 2D shooters of yesteryear. Those games had such an impact on everybody’s imagination because of their bitmap graphics, and since voxels are 3D pixels, we crafted the “Reso” prefix thinking about “resolution”. The “Gun” was more about attitude, as we knew it was a game about blowing stuff up.

Resogun started as platform agnostic. While in the prototype stage, we were running some code on PC and targeting different Sony platforms. As we proceeded, it became more and more clear that to fully express what we had in mind we would need a lot of raw power. Building all levels and enemies out of voxels turned out to be really expensive in terms of computational power, especially when you consider that there are no “fake physics” in Resogun.

Early mesh concept. Open the images in a new tab to see it in full screen.

Every cube behaves according to a specific set of physics rules, and each one of them enjoys its own lighting. When I talk about a “specific set” of physics rules I mean that we had to decide what was good for gameplay and readability and what was not. For example, it’s possible to blow up the entirety of a level, but that wouldn’t be very fun, since after a few explosions there would be very little standing up to work as a background. For the same reason we decided that if you destroy the bottom of a building, the rest of it doesn’t immediately collapse on itself.

"In the beginning there were voxels. Everything started from the technology. At the time, our Creative Director Harri Tikkanen and the tech team came up with an idea: “Wouldn’t it be cool to build a game entirely out of voxels?”. So we started working on that concept, and from that three games emerged, all based on the idea of being built with voxels."

For quite a long time the game didn’t feature the graphics you see in the final product. We went through several concepts: some were more retro, some much more colorful. The original prototype we used to pitch the game to Sony relied a lot on red and blue hues. Nailing the visual style was a long process, and we had several meetings with Sony XDev Europe, the publisher, before we hit the sweet spot of what Resogun is nowadays. There were some concerns regarding the “retro” aspect of it: we wanted it to bring to mind old games, but we didn’t want it to look old and unappealing, especially when we had this really amazing voxel technology that worked so well with lighting effects.

So, while hard at work on the way the game looks, the team was also down to the nitty gritty iterations of gameplay. Over the months things have changed quite a bit in all the key areas of the game. There have been builds featuring “options” (like Gradius or R-type), meaning some small drones circling around the ship and adding firepower to your ship. For a long time we only had one central tower where the player had to deposit both humans and green energy cubes to generate power ups.

In this version the humans run around a treadmill and build the weapons for you – that idea was abandoned because it made the gameplay gravitate too much around the same spot. Experiments with a weapon shop worked great, but the idea was abandoned because it slowed gameplay too much between phases. We were also planning a World Map to track players’ progresses – that was axed because it felt like an unnecessary layer between the player and the action.

The gameplay elements associated with humans have evolved over time as well: for instance we used to have “normal” humans, “special” humans, and even “expiring humans” – all that is pretty much gone now, with the possible exception of the Throwing Human button, born as part of a “refill-human-energy” mechanic and kept because it was just fun to use.

One of the most crucial choices we had to make involved the “twin-stickness” of Resogun: we experimented with the possibility to shoot at 360°, but it didn’t feel right because it turned the player into some sort of “moving turret” – move a bit, shoot in every direction, move again – so in the end we settled for left and right. If we had made the opposite choice back then, you’d be playing a very different game now.

The more the development advanced, the more we started to feel the need for a powerful hardware: to realize our vision any other platform wouldn’t cut it. The concept itself – a cylindrical world around which the player has to pick up humans and fend off aliens – can work pretty much on any hardware, but not when you throw into the mix voxels, physics, lighting, 1080p and 60fps. So the more we talked with Sony, the more we agreed that Resogun needed to be on PS4.

Creation of high definition assets optimized for 1080p:

Despite the similar appearances, the levels and enemies in Resogun are built in different ways. Levels appear to be aligned to a rigid grid – that fits with the architecture style of the game; enemies are built following another logic entirely: first of all they tend to show organic shapes such as curves, plus we needed to make sure that they appear as clearly as possible as elements of the gameplay – avoiding the possibility of them being confused with the background.

"The more the development advanced, the more we started to feel the need for a powerful hardware: to realize our vision any other platform wouldn’t cut it. The concept itself – a cylindrical world around which the player has to pick up humans and fend off aliens – can work pretty much on any hardware, but not when you throw into the mix voxels, physics, lighting, 1080p and 60fps. So the more we talked with Sony, the more we agreed that Resogun needed to be on PS4."

Talking about 1080p, the lack of SD limitations means that we were allowed to design enemies, humans and pick ups in a specific way, using maximum contrast between blocks, shadows, etc. To make a long story short, if the game was working at a lower resolution, all these elements would literally look different in shape. The same is true for texts and particle effects: at 1080p we were able to communicate effectively abstract concepts without stealing estate from the gameplay.

Because of their importance in the game, we couldn’t use pre-exsisting photographic skyboxes. So we started to do them by hand, trying to convey that feeling you have when you look at an open sky through your eyes rather than through a camera – a wide, baroque stretch of clouds.

The level backgrounds were created using first simple meshes, then converted to hollow cube geometries. The final touches were done by hand, so we could make things look the way we wanted.

Physics and particle engine Insights and GPU usage:

All of Resogun physics is directly offloaded to the PS4 GPU using compute shaders. As mentioned earlier, for gameplay and readability purposes we didn’t opt for a 100% realistic physic model, but we clearly needed something powerful enough to calculate all voxel collisions.

Regarding particles, there’s not many of them in the game. Examples are the effect used for the Overdrive – which is a mix of compute shaders and point sprites – and some of the things flying in the background. For the explosions we opted for a legacy particle system used in previous games, one that doesn’t involve the GPU at all.

Use of unified memory and how it helped offloading the tasks:

Using Unified Memory means that the CPU and the GPU share the same memory. The main advantage of this setup is making the game code communicate with the compute shaders much faster, like we did in the case of particles and voxels. Another way we used it was for the enemies’ code: that was written in the Unified Memory, so the GPU could read it directly.

Challenges faced due to PS4’s slower CPU speed/Core Speed and targeting 60fps

One of the main advantage of consoles over PC is that, independently from the CPU speed, the console-specific libraries are usually much faster than comparable libraries on PC. Reaching 60fps was our goal from the beginning, because it makes the gameplay so much more fluid. It wasn’t a terribly hard result to achieve: all game code is heavily multithreaded, so all available PS4 CPU cores were put to good use.

Audio Creation

The goal of the original Resogun soundtrack – composed and played by our friend and collaborator Ari Pulkkinen – was to reflect the arcade history of gaming, combining modern electronic genres and styles. The main references include Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy OST, M83′s score for Oblivion, and the Transformers score by Steve Jablonsky. The Super Stardust HD soundtrack was also used as a reference, even though we knew Resogun was darker in tone and needed something a bit different from its “spiritual prequel”.

We started from a couple of concepts: it had to sound like a tribute to “old school” games (namely, those from the C64/Amiga era) and we wanted it to sound chiptune. Over time, the songs changed to reflect the changes in art style: the darker the game became, the less we relied on chiptune as an inspiration, moving progressively into more modern electronic soundscapes.

"One of the main advantage of consoles over PC is that, independently from the CPU speed, the console-specific libraries are usually much faster than comparable libraries on PC. Reaching 60fps was our goal from the beginning, because it makes the gameplay so much more fluid. It wasn’t a terribly hard result to achieve: all game code is heavily multithreaded, so all available PS4 CPU cores were put to good use."

No real instruments were used. It took Ari about 3 months to make it sound just right – some things made it just in time, for example the boss themes were completed just before release, together with the final visuals for the bosses themselves. When all was ready, we mastered it at the famous Finnish studio “Chartmakers”, which among their clients features artists such as Rammstein, Amorphis, Sonata Arctica, The Rasmus and a bunch of other bands. A lot of fans expressed their desire to purchase the OST: we should finally be able to make it available this year – more info about that in the next few weeks.

When it comes to sound design, Ari and his collaborator Alexander Dmitriev created over 1000 unique sounds effects. On average, the game mixes about 100 different sounds at any moment. The approach was what they call “oldskool chip-board sound design”, and it was heavily influenced by what old school games have done in that regard. The final mix for the sounds took almost two weeks: obtaining the perfect result required heavy iteration.

A lot of effort was put into the LFE channel. We wanted the bass to kick ass – and hopefully you can hear that! One final note on the female voice giving hints: she seems to have a lot of supporters, and yes, she’s the same “voice” you can hear in both Super Stardust HD and Dead Nation. Unfortunately, no further details on her origin are available, – for now, that will have to remain a mystery.

Resogun was awarded Best PS4 Sound Design by IGN last year, so all in all I think our efforts paid some dividends.

Adjusting and fine-tuning the gameplay, and controller input for the console:

The last few months of development were mostly dedicated to fine-tuning the gameplay, finalizing the UI and wrapping up the bosses. We knew the main game mechanics were in place, we just needed to take some decisions regarding the scoring systems, multiplier, amount of humans per level, etc.

"As a developer, there’s never enough time, and there’s always something you can do better. And indeed, the months since the launch of Resogun have shown that we could still do a lot to improve the overall gaming experience. Most likely you’ll see the results of the extra development time very soon."

When you make intense games with a high replay value, the most important thing is iteration. Test an idea, judge the result, then try to change it up and see how that works. Rinse and repeat. That’s what we usually do in the final stages of development, until we can’t find any room for improvement or, most likely, time runs out. When it comes to Resogun, even now that we are working on additional content, we have a new build each day, each one slightly different from the previous one. The team compiles an iteration, then gathers with Internal QA to play it, and then everybody goes back to their desks to work on a better, improved build.

Just before its GamesCom debut, the guys were literally banging on the keyboards minutes before the taxi that was supposed to take us to the airport arrived, and the same scenario pretty much repeated itself when we sent Resogun for final QA.

When it comes to the PS4 controller, we realized that the embedded speaker was to be used to communicate important events to the player when distraction was out of question. If you have played Resogun at the hardest difficulty levels, you know there are some parts you have to face while being “in the zone”: hesitate for half a second and the score is ruined. In retrospect we feel that the announcer speaks a bit too much, often prioritizing things out of context. So, one thing you’ll notice in future updates will be less speaking and more focused audio feedback.

Closing Words:

As a developer, there’s never enough time, and there’s always something you can do better. And indeed, the months since the launch of Resogun have shown that we could still do a lot to improve the overall gaming experience. Most likely you’ll see the results of the extra development time very soon. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details: getting a shippable product is not the hard part, being happy with the fine-tuning… that’s another matter entirely. Luckily for us, players seems to like what we shipped, and I have no doubt they will love what’s coming next.