It's been a strange past year for Finnish developer Housemarque. Following the release of 2017's Nex Machina and Matterfall, Housemarque ended the year by famously pronouncing that "Arcade is Dead" before then shifting focus to the currently in-development battle royale shooter Stormdivers. As 2018 starts to draw to a close though, Housemarque has today released a new blog post that not only clarifies last year's "arcade is dead" proclamation but also has touched on the current state of the studio.

The biggest piece of news from Housemarque's post today is that they revealed they are actively developing another project besides just that of Stormdivers. Housemarque says that they have made the jump to AAA development with this new title and that it is the "biggest and most ambitious game that Housemarque has ever worked on." The team for the game is nearing 70 members and they are still growing that staff even more. This project came about last year after the studio pitched an idea to a presumed publishing partner that then landed then the deal.

The studio reiterated that this game is not of the arcade genre, though they did provide more clarification on what they meant by last year's statement and said the spirit of their past work isn't lost on the company. While the studio itself couldn't be sustained by arcade titles alone anymore, Housemarque said today that arcade titles as a whole aren't dead, they're just dead now dead at Housemarque. "And we will always love arcade," the blog post stated. "So perhaps arcade is not completely dead — the spirit is still alive at Housemarque — but as everything must evolve, it is changing, and we dare say that you will still see elements of our love for arcade in future titles."

As for Stormdivers, Housemarque also said that they've been listening to fan feedback and hear the concerns about just following the battle royale trend. However, they responded to those fears by saying that the game has been in pre-production since 2015 and has been primarily worked on following the launch of Alienation in 2016. To try and convince fans that Stormdivers is anything but hopping on a bandwagon, it was encouraged that they should sign up for the game's beta to see for themselves.

While it has been tough for many to see Housemarque move away from what made them so beloved in the first place, it's good to hear that the studio seems to be in a better place now than they have been over the past couple years. Even if Stormdivers doesn't look like your cup of tea, to know that another unannounced game is being worked on at the company is exciting. I don't think anyone will deny the level of talent that is present at Housemarque, so to see them stretching their legs a bit more with a higher budget and more staff members is definitely intriguing.

We likely won't hear much about this secretive AAA project for quite awhile though if I had to guess, so I wouldn't expect to hear any announcements soon. As for Stormdivers, it still doesn't have a release date but it will be arriving on PC at some point down the road.