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Embracer CEO 'hoped for a greater reception' for Saints Row reboot

Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors acknowledges there are just as many fans unhappy with the new Saints Row as there are people who are satisfied.

Ozzie Mejia

September 21, 2022 3:40 PM

Deep Silver

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Deep Silver and Volition thought they had a hit on their hands with the new Saints Row. However, there seems to be a problem with the game, as even its fans are noticing that it either treads a lot of old ground or is simply not what they hoped it would be. This is a big reason why Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors doesn't appear to be entirely happy with how things have turned out so far.

"Obviously, personally I had hoped for a greater reception of the game," Wingefors said during Embracer Group's annual general meeting (via GamesRadar). "It's been a very polarized view. There is a lot of things that could be said in detail around it. But on one hand I'm happy to see a lot of gamers and fans happy. At the same time, I'm a bit sad to see lots of fans not happy. It's difficult. I think we need to wait for the quarterly report in November to have more details around this. We are still fairly early in our release window, and still collecting data. There's a lot of bug fixing, and there is more content coming."

The PC version of Saints Row is currently sitting with a 66 critic review score on Metacritic with an even worse 2.6 user score. We didn't hate the game here at Shacknews, but even our own Morgan Shaver noted in their full review that the game was very hit-and-miss, offering some fun gameplay moments that were offset by a subpar story and a swarm of bugs.

In spite of that, Wingefors is hopeful that the reboot's fortunes will trend positive in the future. He expresses confidence that Saints Row will ultimately prove profitable, though where the series goes from there is anybody's guess. A post-launch roadmap is expected soon and we'll report on that as soon as it arrives, so keep it on Shacknews for more Saints Row stories.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?