Hellblade developer 'surprised so many people played the game with mouse and keyboard'

After launching Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice in August last year, developer Ninja Theory reported "better than expected" sales by October. Six months after that, the dark fantasy action adventure triumphed in five categories at the British Academy Games Awards. 

In conversation with Samuel at Rezzed, chief creative director Tameem Antoniades said that while he and his team expected Hellblade's sales to excel on console—the overall split was closer than anticipated.    

"We did see this as primarily a PlayStation 4 title, and we thought that platform would be the bulk of our sales, and in fact it was pretty evenly split," explains Antoniades. "So going forward, we will make sure that we get our interface and everything right for the PC audience as well."

Following his warm review, Leif Johnson explained why games like Hellblade are eroding the border between indie and triple-A. Hellblade has since earned a place on our coveted best stories in PC gaming list—all of which underscores its place on this platform.  

Antoniades adds: "We were so surprised that so many people played the game with mouse and keyboard, and we dropped the ball a little bit at the start. We patched it afterwards, but we dropped the ball with our mouse and keyboard support." 

Additional reporting by Samuel Roberts.