Astro Bot is the “Most Exciting Recent Success” for PlayStation – SIE head of Studio Business Group
While Sony has stated its intentions to make more family friendly games in the wake of Astro Bot’s success in the past, CEO of the Studio Business Group at Sony Interactive Entertainment, Hermen Hulst, has reiterated how happy the company has been at the title’s success. During a PlayStation business update, Hulst referred to Astro Bot as one of the “most exciting recent successes,” for PlayStation.
“Astro Bot was a smash hit, achieving universal acclaim among players and critics and sweeping industry award shows,” said Hulst about the critically-acclaimed platformer that came out as a PS5 exclusive back September 2024. As part of the business update, Hulst also referred to Astro Bot as an “emerging IP”, since three titles have been developed featuring the character front-and-center so far.
He also spoke about wanting to make more Astro Bot games in the future, referring to its future as “an enduring and iconic game franchise for PlayStation,” according to X user Genki_JPN.
Sony executive Hiroki Totoki had expressed similar enthusiasm for Astro Bot back in February, praising the game for being nominated across multiple categories during The Game Awards 2024. Totoki had also praised Helldivers 2 for similar reasons.
“At The Game Awards 2024, our first-party title Astro Bot won four categories, including Game of the Year and Best Family Game – the most of any title,” said Totoki.
“In addition, the live service game Helldivers 2, which was released in February last year, won Best Ongoing Game and Best Multiplayer Game awards. The fact that titles in genres we are planning to expand in the future, including titles for families and live service games, have received these awards is a major stride towards building a broad title portfolio.”
Astro Bot had been proving itself to be quite successful shortly after launch. Sony revealed back in November 2024 that more than 1.5 million copies of the 3D platformer had been sold over the span of the title’s first nine weeks after release.
Since its release, the developers behind Astro Bot have revealed quite a few interesting details about the game. For example, creative director Nicolas Doucet had revealed in an interview back in March that the game’s beloved VIP Bot stages were originally conceived as mini-stages.
“The [VIP Stage] was initially thought of as a mini-stage, but it got bigger and bigger,” said Doucet. “It’s not mini at all.”
Doucet had also spoken about how surprising it was for the development team at Asobi to see the success of VR game Astro Bot Rescue Mission – which was essentially the first Astro Bot game ever.
“It was an amazing project because we made it without any expectations,” said Doucet, talking about the fun experimentation that the studio was able to partake in during the development of Astro Bot Rescue Mission. “All we wanted was to do the best possible evolution of that prototype and help VR show people VR can do this, this, this, and that. We were trying to come up with as many original ideas as possible.”
Astro Bot is available on PS5. The game is also available as part of a bundle alongside the console. Check out our review for more details.
