Summary

  • Until Dawn's recently released remake/remaster doesn't appear to be very appealing, becoming one of the worst PS5 launches this year.
  • Until Dawn's player count on PS5 is reportedly 28.6 percent less than Concord's, a game that bombed so badly that Sony pulled it from storefronts just two weeks after launch.
  • We don't know for sure why the game is doing so badly on PS5, but factors like high price, lack of marketing, and negative comparisons to the original game have undoubtedly contributed.

Until Dawn's remake launched last week on both PS5 and Steam, though to say it hasn't set the world on fire would be an understatement. Comparison videos were made shortly before release, with comments full of people criticizing the title for looking "way worse" than the original, stripping away its atmosphere to chase realism. It also had more than a few technical issues too, as the game launched to Mixed reviews on Steam.

All of those issues - combined with the game's less than stellar marketing on PlayStation's part - now seem to have come together perfectly to deliver this year's most abysmal high-profile launch on the platform. According to True Trophies, the player count for Until Dawn on PlayStation 5 upon launch is one of the worst that the console has seen this year, and is somehow 28.6 percent smaller than even Concord's player count at launch.

Until Dawn Remake Has Had A Worse PS5 Launch Than Concord

Until Dawn close up of a Wendingo grabbing Sams face

This is the very same Concord that bombed so hard that PlayStation had to remove it from both its own storefront and Steam just two weeks after launch, and offer everyone that bought it a no-questions asked refund. Until Dawn is admittedly doing better on Steam than Concord did, though it only managed a peak player count of 2,607 while launching on a new platform for the first time. That still isn't great.

There are most likely a number of factors at play here, including the fact that PlayStation is charging full price for a remake of a game that isn't even a decade old at this point, and one that many fans are claiming looks worse than the original. You can still grab the original Until Dawn for next to nothing on the second-hand market, and it looks like there just isn't enough incentive to pay full price for the remake.

There's also the fact that the game's marketing has been pretty lackluster. Ever since the title was revealed back in January, there have been barely any trailers or marketing outside of official PlayStation channels, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a lot of people were caught out by the game's release earlier this month.

In any case, it's not a great sign for PlayStation's upcoming remaster endeavors, which include a remaster of Horizon Zero Dawn. Of course, Horizon is far more popular than Until Dawn, and will almost definitely be marketed more thoroughly as a result, but the sheer lack of people interested in a remake of a game that was already widely available and well-received may indicate that Horizon could share similar struggles.

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Until Dawn is a remake of the hit horror game for PS5 and PC, featuring updated visuals, lighting, and new content using the power of Unreal Engine 5. It follows five people stranded in a ski lodge, who find themselves hunted by a terrifying killer.