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Metro Exodus Steam Key
Post-apocalyptic shooter Metro Exodus is already selling well on Steam, despite users of the marketplace having to wait a full year for its release.
During a webcast around Embracer's most recent financial results, CEO Lars Wingefors offered more insight into key releases from the Group's various games businesses, including Metro publisher Deep Silver.
Inspired by the novels of Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro Exodus continues Artyom’s story in the greatest Metro adventure yet. Embark on an incredible journey - board the Aurora, a heavily modified steam locomotive, and join a handful of survivors as they search for a new life in the East. There were shocked faces all round when Metro Exodus was suddenly declared to be exclusive to Epic's increasingly pugnacious new store yesterday. The Fortnite bunch have been making a play to turn their store into a serious Steam rival for a few weeks now, but the much-anticipated third Metro game was a hell of a scalp to take from Valve.
Discussing the Steam release of Metro Exodus, Wingefors said he was 'happy to see it's been performing well,' having sold approximately 200,000 copies in its first few days.
He also noted that the biggest market for the Steam version had been 'one big Asian country,' although did not specify which one.
Metro Exodus was the first major title to receive backlash for launching as a timed exclusive on the Epic Games Store. This became a familiar reaction to such agreements last year, affecting titles ranging from AAA shooter Borderlands 3 to indie title Ooblets.
When Metro's exclusivity was first announced, Valve said the removal from Steam was 'unfair to customers' -- although later said it has kept quiet on the subject of Epic exclusives given the controversy that followed.
Despite the anger expressed by players, Metro Exodus performed well on the Epic Games Store, selling 2.5 more copies than the previous title managed on Steam during its own launch window.
When speaking to GamesIndustry.biz last year, Klemens Kundratitz -- CEO of Deep Silver parent Koch Media -- expressed no regrets over the deal with Epic and suggested the publisher may seek similar agreements in future.
Elsewhere in the Embracer webcast, Wingefors touched on another major Deep Silver release: the long-awaited Shenmue III.
While he did not specify sales figures, his comments suggest it was quite the massive seller some people might expect. But this makes it no less important a release for the Group, he said.
'I was happy to see the core fans of Shenmue was happy, but it was also clear Shenmue III is not a AAA mass market product,' he said. 'It's a product for the fans, and I'm happy that we pleased them.'
Embracer had plenty to shout about in its latest financials. In addition to revenue growth, it revealed it had acquired Saber Interactive, while Koch Media's acquisition of Voxler (plus some recent openings) brought the group up to 26 development studios.
Metro Exodus developer 4A Games has announced a PC Enhanced Edition of its first-person shooter. As with the versions coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, this updated PC edition will be offered as a free upgrade.
'We have built an all-new Fully Ray Traced Lighting Pipeline that brings a number of optimisations, upgrades, and new features to the Ray Traced Global Illumination and Emissive Lighting that we pioneered with the original release of Metro Exodus, as well as an upgraded implementation of our powerful Temporal Reconstruction technology to further boost resolution, visual detail and performance,' 4A Games wrote in a blog post on the new versions.
'And we've pushed these enhancements to the limit to take advantage of the latest Ray Tracing capable GPU hardware from Nvidia and AMD, to create the ultimate version for our PC enthusiast fans.'
On consoles, Metro Exodus will run with ray-tracing at 60FPS. It'll hit 4K on PS5 and Series X and 'target' 1080p on Series S. You will be able to adjust the game's FOV, and there will be haptic feedback on the PS5 DualSense controller.
There's no release date still for these console editions, though they remain free upgrades. The Xbox version of the game will be released via Smart Delivery.
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A table listing all of the many visual upgrades coming with the new console and PC Enhanced Edition versions of the game shows only two differences on PC: 'advanced ray traced reflections' and DLSS 2.0 support.
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Meanwhile, a Mac version of Metro Exodus will arrive via the Apple Store, Steam and Epic Games Store in March. A Linux version will launch via Steam later in the year.