Summary
A new update has been released forAstro Bot, the 3D platformer from Team Asobi and Sony released just a little under a week ago. But what makes this recently releasedAstro Botupdate a particular curiosity is that no one seems to be sure exactly what it does.
The third in the line of games starring the titular robot, followingAstro Bot Rescue Missionin 2018 andAstro’s Playroomin 2020,Astro Botlaunched to universal acclaim on September 6. It’s currently enjoying a 9.5/10 among fan reviews on MetaCritic, with professional reviews just behind at 94/100, making it the highest rated first-party PlayStation 5 game of all time. The publisher seems to be throwing all the support it can around the title, going so far asaltering Sony’s social media pagesto honor the game.
At the time of this writing, neither Sony nor Team Asobi have published any sort of patch notes regarding Update 1.003, which was released on September 12, leaving members of its community puzzled as to exactly why this update was added to the game. However, speculation from around the game’s community states that it may be tied to a game-saving issue that has been causing players to lose progress whenever a crash occurs, including autosave data.Saving inAstro Botcan’t be done manually by conventional means. The game will automatically save during certain points in the adventure, but these can be few and far between, and the only way to manually save the game seems to be hitting the pause button and returning to the title screen.
Astro Bot’s Latest Update Is a Mystery
Released to celebrate 30 years of PlayStation, and featuring a story that has Astro collecting parts of his ship that resemble a PS5, the game is a love letter to the Sony brand.Astro Botis filled with PlayStation cameos, with 173 different robots to unlock, all bearing the likenesses of characters from game franchises likeGod of War,Tomb Raider, andPaRappa the Rapper.
Even with all the positive publicity generated by the release of the cutesy platformer,Astro Botis falling well short of sales projectionsin a key market. Japanese retail sales from September 2-8 showAstro Botselling 12,700 copies in that time period, which is well short of expectations for a first-party game from Sony. However, those numbers only chart physical retail sales and still place it in second place in the country, behind rhythm action gameTouhou Danmaku Kagura: Phantasia Lost, so they’re not a completely reliable indicator of the game’s overall success when factoring in the ever-growing popularity of digital sales.
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