Hypercharge Unboxed Generated Huge Buzz Internally At Xbox, According To Gameplay Director

Highlights

Hypercharge Unboxed, a smash-hit indie game, went viral at Xbox headquarters.
The game has an 80 Metacritic score and a “very positive” Steam review badge.
The indie game’s success led to increased marketing budget and recognition from Phil Spencer.

Creative gameplay and marketing director Joe Henson has said that Hypercharge Unboxed, a smash-hit indie game that puts players onto the battlefield as action figures, went viral within Xbox headquarters.

Hypercharge first launched on PC via Steam back in 2020, before arriving on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S earlier this year. It holds an impressive Metacritic score of 80, whilst also boasting a “very positive” review badge on Steam with over 3,500 reviews at the time of writing this article.

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Now, in a new interview with Gamer Social Club, Creative gameplay designer and marketing director Joe Henson has talked about how the first and third-person shooter went “viral” internally at Xbox. Henson told Gamer Social Club that whenever Hypercharge developer Digital Cybercherries had meetings with Xbox it was brought up how much “buzz” there was going on internally at Xbox, with the studio saying it was “crazy.”

“Chris Charla was saying he was getting emails from everybody saying what’s happening, this game’s come out of nowhere, it’s blowing up, what should we do,” Henson said, before adding, “Eventually it got sent to Phil Spencer where he was like this game’s cool, or what’s going on with game, I can’t remember the exact thing that was said, but we were told it got to Phil Spencer and he knows about the game.”

“It’s amazing to see how everybody was. We were just this sort of kind of unknown indie game, blows up, goes viral, everybody at Xbox interally talking about it and then it’s going all the way up to Phil Spencer and it’s just amazing. It’s surreal,” Henson said.

Less than one month after Hypercharge Unboxed was released on Xbox, Microsoft confirmed that the hit shooter had sold over 100,000 copies. Henson said that the studio “now have the ability to allocate a decent budget towards marketing and invest in areas of the game that we previously couldn’t afford to enhance.”

Hypercharge Unboxed becomes even more impressive when you discover that it is developed by a team of just six people. The team have said that Hypercharge is their “childhood dream game,” and you can get it on Steam right now for 10% off as part of the storefront’s Summer sale.