Foamstars is now officially free-to-play.
The game’s listing on PlayStation Store now includes this text:
“[FOAMSTARS] will be available to download for free from [October 4 2024 1:00 (UTC)].”
We can also confirm that the store simply indicates the game as Free, allowing you to just add it to your PlayStation library. And, of course, you may have already seen its new status when as our featured picture.
Foamstars launched on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 just this February 2024. It was also part of PlayStation Plus Essentials. TrueTrophies reported a month later that the game lost 94 % of its player base, citing data from analytics company GameInsights.
Square Enix has yet to reveal official numbers for Foamstars, but they did eventually confirm to shareholders that the game, alongside Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, did not meet sales expectations.
While Foamstars is a third party title, its exclusive release to PlayStation does make it part of Sony’s live service strategy. Thus far, Sony has not been very successful in this endeavor at all. Helldivers 2 had a successful launch at the start of this year, but has since struggled to maintain that success.
Of course, we cannot avoid talking about the elephant in the room that is Concord. Suffice to say that the title has set dubious records for its disastrous live service launch, and having the shortest lifespan for a failed game in its genre.
This looks worse as fans have pointed out that Sony made the puzzling decision to cancel games like The Last Of Us Online and a leaked Spider-Verse live service game. This all augurs poorly for the Sony live service titles still to come, such as Marathon and Fairgame$.
But now, the focus would have to shift to Foamstars’ actual owner, Square Enix. While we don’t know the provisions for Foamstars’ exclusive contract with PlayStation, we can see that Square Enix would want to bring this game to more platforms.
While Foamstars has faced criticism for its close resemblance to Nintendo’s Splatoon, that doesn’t necessarily relegate it to a guaranteed failure. There have not actually been that many shooters that copy the aesthetic and game design of Splatoon, but Ninjala is proof that there is opportunity to make it a genre. Developer Gungho Online is on record that their title reached 10 million downloads as of February 2023.
And of course, as you may remember, Ninjala happens to be a Nintendo Switch exclusive. So really, the ideal next step that Square Enix could take is to bring Foamstars to Nintendo’s fans. That may not necessarily be the Switch, as much as it could be the Switch 2. It will certainly be easier for Square Enix to port the game on the Switch 2’s rumored more powerful hardware, and it may also be more capable of supporting a robust online system.
Square Enix could also look into bringing Foamstars to Xbox, Steam, or mobile, or even all of them. Whatever they plan to do next may depend on their contract with PlayStation, and how well the game does now.
