Phantom Blade Zero is a not-quite-Soulslike action-RPG from S-Game Studio, a Chinese developer that had previously only made mobile games. In less than 24 hours after its initial release on Steam, it’s already peaked at over 700,000 concurrent players, cementing its spot as the 15th most-played game at launch ever on Valve’s storefront.
Reviews for the kungfupunk adventure were pretty strong when they arrived earlier this week, but Phantom Blade Zero‘s launch day momentum now puts it within a stone’s throw of records previously set by single-player GOTY winners like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring. We’ll see if the opening of the sprawling 30-hour story campaign is enough to hook people over the Halloween weekend. “Another Chinese studio came out of nowhere and made a banger game. Just beat the first ‘boss.’ So far so good,” reads one early Steam user review.
It’s a reference to previous debut hits out of China like Black Myth: Wukong. That action game holds the second-biggest concurrent player launch on Steam ever at 2,415,714, roughly a million behind PUBG at the start of the battle royale craze. Will Phantom Blade Zero follow a similar arc? An interesting analysis by Shenzhen-based consultant Daniel Camilo suggests a definitive answer of “no.”
“ Phantom Blade Zero is eagerly awaited by core gamers in China, and across the world,” he recently wrote . “It’s not a cultural phenomenon anywhere however. Not even in China. That’s the key difference. Grandparents in China knew about Black Myth Wukong when it launched.
Source link
