Ilari Kuittinen, CEO and co-founder of Housemarque, has revealed during an interview with publication Helsingin Sonomat that the company’s next project, Saros, wouldn’t have been possible if Sony didn’t acquire the developer.
Saros was announced during Sony’s State of Play February 2025 broadcast, and according to the article, the game’s budget “can be compared to Remedy’s Alan Wake 2, which has an estimated development and marketing budget of around €70 million…the most expensive cultural production in Finland to date.”
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Kuittinen note that development of Saros kicked off in 2022, and that “you couldn’t have made such investments as an independent studio.”
On every sales and conference trip, you wondered if this was the company’s last outing. The difficult times were made easier by the fact that we were constantly negotiating new projects, so there was always a light at the end of the tunnel.
Housemarque was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2021, just a few months after the release of Returnal, which was the company’s first PS5 game. Prior to that, it had worked on smaller-budget titles such as Super Stardust HD and Resogun, but Returnal was its first AAA, big-budget offering.
We had the feeling that it was better to try to get into a big family than to stay independent for the next few years. We thought we had to do the deal now.
Saros is a brand new IP but builds on the foundations of Returnal, taking the form of an action game that focuses on an off-world colony on Carcosa that is plagued by an ominous eclipse. Players follow Soltari Enforce, Arjun Devarj, who is tenacious in his goal of finding who he is looking for, and is portrayed by Rahul Kohli.
Saros has yet to attract a release date but is slated to appear in 2026.
[Source – Helsingin Sonomat via VGC]
