Concord is not a bad game, but if we’re being generous, it’s also not looking like a particularly successful one. Early indications suggest the title has flopped catastrophically on PC storefront Steam, and while it’s likely doing a lot better on PS5, it’s not going to be breaking records any time soon.
Sony, of course, will have expected differently. It signed on as the publisher of this project back in 2021, and eventually acquired developer Firewalk amid much excitement in 2023. At the time, bigwig Hermen Hulst said he was “impressed” by the studio’s ambition to connect players in “new and innovative ways” and promised the team would deliver something “truly special for gamers”.
While we’re satisfied with the overall quality of the sci-fi shooter’s gameplay, we pointed out a lack of originality in our 7/10 review. We think this is a totally fine online first-person shooter, but we’re not seeing the innovation that Hulst teased when his company decided to acquire the studio.
Still, a lot of money has been spent on this project, so is it salvageable? We all know it’s hard to shake the stench of failure once it latches on to a title, just ask the likes of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Marvel’s Avengers, both high-profile flops based on much bigger brands. But surely there’s something the developers can do?
What Went Wrong?
Before we consider potential rescue strategies, it’s important to consider exactly what’s gone wrong for Concord, and that’s a complicated and multifaceted topic. The game appears to have found itself at the centre of several different controversies, all intertwining to create a perfect, formidable storm. Some of these issues can be attributed to the product itself; others are simply out of its hands.
Perhaps chief among them all is that this game has been seen as the symbol of Sony’s live service strategy, a direction for the platform holder which is proving controversial and has largely been rejected by enthusiasts. While Helldivers 2 was also part of this approach, the game largely attracted indifference prior to release, and its explosion in popularity is difficult to ascertain.
Sony, historically, is no stranger to multiplayer games: there’s a rose-tinted fondness to PS3 era titles like Resistance, Killzone, and MAG these days. But at the time these products weren’t enormously commercially successful, and it’s the narrative titles like Uncharted, God of War, and The Last of Us that would eventually shape Sony’s first-party strategy.
Concord appears to have found itself at the centre of several different controversies, all intertwining to create a perfect, formidable storm
Despite the likes of Fortnite and Call of Duty being far-and-away the most successful titles on PS5 and PS4, many vocal fans aren’t fond of the idea of “forever games”. They want high-quality one-and-done single player experiences, but these are taking longer to make and Sony seems reluctant to announce them early in their development cycle. It’s led to a climate where many feel the only titles Sony are making these days are live service.
This is a marketing blunder, because Concord has been treated like a target for some fans. There’s a sentiment around Push Square and across the wider spectrum of social media that this game must fail in order to send the platform holder a message. If Sony had been a little more subtle about its live service ambitions, and more open about the other types of projects it’s got cooking, the release may have avoided this unfortunate fate.
Of course, it’s not the only problem, and there is a general fatigue surrounding live service shooters. Overwatch, while still popular, is not the juggernaut it once was – and the market is saturated with similar experiences. Concord may be a good game, but it’s hard to stand out when your competition is Marvel Rivals, featuring household names like Spider-Man and Captain America.
And then there’s the character design: you’re unlikely to find success unless people want to cosplay as your cast. Consider the types of heroes appearing in gacha games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail: they’re attractive and cool. While Concord does have a couple of good characters, its retro sci-fi colour scheme is garish and its stars are kooky and unusual. Even with some sublime animation injecting them with personality, you’re not going to find any of the characters from Concord on PornHub. And that, whether you like to admit it or not, is a genuine problem.
So What's Next?
Concord launched with a budget price point of $40/£35, which seems like a reasonable deal for the amount of content on offer. Indeed, there’s been a groundswell of criticism aimed at free-to-play business models for well over a decade in enthusiast circles, so it could be argued Firewalk took the right approach by adopting a premium release.
But the reality is that its competition is all free-to-play. Marvel Rivals will have all its heroes unlocked at launch, and it won’t cost you a penny to play as the Black Panther or Thor. The same is true of Overwatch 2 these days. No matter how good Concord is, it was always going to be a tough ask to get players to cough up the cash for it – especially with its uncertain future.
We suspect Sony will start to break down barriers by giving the game an extended PS Plus Premium trial, which should encourage a small number of players to try it out. A cosmetics store is coming later in the year, hopefully with some more attractive outfits for the cast, and that may represent a good opportunity for the platform holder to introduce a free-to-play format.
The problem that the game’s going to find, even if it is free-to-play, is indifference. The title’s open beta only attracted a peak of around 2,000 concurrents on Steam, and that was available for everyone to play for free. Sony could pay streamers to play the game and up its overall marketing spend, but at what point is it throwing good money after bad?
Sony needs live service to bankroll its extortionately expensive single player narratives, but its core audience has utterly rejected the idea
The word of mouth among the title’s small audience is decent, with many eulogising about the actual gameplay. This will certainly help encourage others to try the title, but it may not be enough to pull players away from much bigger and better releases they already love, like Fortnite. This is the challenge that all live service titles face.
The platform holder has to try something, though; it’s clearly invested heavily into this project and free-to-play seems like the best way to go. The game will probably need some fresh energy: a new character, some different outfits – a rebranding of such. Pair these with a free-to-play relaunch, and it could be salvageable to some extent.
But it’s an uphill battle from this point, and Sony at large seems stuck. The PlayStation maker needs live service to bankroll its extortionately expensive single player narratives, but its core audience has utterly rejected the idea and it needs evangelists to standout in a sector already well-dominated by juggernaut brands.
This is the challenge that new co-CEO Hulst must overcome. The ex-Guerrilla managing director has enjoyed a rapid rise through PlayStation’s hierarchy, but his hardest challenges are still very much ahead of him. He’ll need to earn every cent of his seven figure salary to get his company out of this rut.
Do you think Concord is salvageable and what does Sony need to do to get the series back on track? Is this title a lost cause, or is there a great game here just waiting to find an audience? And what does all this drama mean for Sony’s live service push? Let us know in the comments section below.
Do you think Concord can be saved? (1,490 votes)
- Yes, it's a great game and it'll find its audience
- Meh, I just don't care either way
- No, pull the plug, it's over already
Comments 157
Let’s stir the pot some more, shall we.
We Concorders must unite.
Not with those designs, it won't. The cast is a weird mixture of generic and incredibly visually unpleasant.
The gameplay, frankly, doesn't do enough to really draw attention away from other established live-service games on its own, either.
Honestly, I think that's for the best. Let Sony take a hit on this and they'll invest their money into better projects in the future. Even if it doesn't steer them away from live-service entirely, hopefully they'll at least attempt more unique and fun ones like Helldivers 2.
it'll move to a free to play model within 3-6 months. If they put it on plus it'll get a good player count boost, but will need steady support to survive
I know I've said this before, but if Sony wanted a live service hero shooter, they could have created one using their own IP. A hero shooter with Ratchet & Clank, HZD characters, Resistance, Killzone, Uncharted, could have been really cool, if done right.
To be honest, I don't even know what the game is about. Just that it's online only and you fire guns and I'm not even sure how accurate that is. I do feel really bad for the developers who put so much hard work into it though. Must be very frustrating to see something you worked so hard on not doing well.
The game is receiving actual HATE from all fronts and it's not groundbreaking so its gonna be tough to survive. I think it'll die within a year or less.
You know what Sony should have done? Not cancelling TLOU Online. Instant hit.
Maybe they could make a fantastic live service game with Socom? Instant hit.
Instead of this Concord *****.
Suicide Squad vs Concord for biggest fail of the generation was not on my bingo card. Wallets are tighter these days and weird box-priced live service games are not gonna fare well. I am genuinely curious how SW: Outlaws does with its absurd ultimate edition price tag.
They Could add a PVE Setting to go along with the PVP put all of that lore they have for this game to good use They Could even use those story cinematics to go along with it.
Short answer no. Long answer noo.
Look in all honesty nobody is complaining about the polish/finish/release state as it certainly looks like a Sony product.
It’s just live service isn’t where it was 8 years ago. There are so many f2p games what is there about concord that all the other games don’t have?
I’d argue nothing. So what is the incentive for people to for out £40 to try it? When they can just go download any of the other games to try for free?
Maybe it would have been better received had there been a strong release of first party games and this was an addition GaaS game to those.
Not every game hits, and this is Sony’s big L. It’s not their first, won’t be their last.
I wonder how Sony might be eyeing (or more likely worrying) with FairGame$ right now.
Helldivers is genuinely funny and its story fits well with live service game design.
Concord has GotG-derivative characters fighting against clones of each other because... Overwatch was popular several years ago?
What's the best way to say this without getting permanently banned again? xD
Sony you want a successful GAAS then take an example from The First Descendant or Overwatch. In the latter case, however, it is important to pay attention to characters like Tracer, Mercy, Widowmaker or d.va.
Concord died the moment it was revealed. and how everyone is now trying to find answers as to why Concord died when the answer is so obvious is just ridiculous.
I think the damage is done. From what ive read it the character designs that have rubbed people the wrong way. Myself, while im not opposed to multiplayer games, the trailer at State of Play made this look like it was going to be a story driven game. The moment it showed a 5v5 shooter is when alot of my interest went.
F2P is the only way it might have a chance at resurgence, along with a re-launch, 2.0 of sorts, touting new features etc
Even then it will be tough, but there's no chance in hell it gains an audience at that price for entry. And without an audience, there's really no future for a MP live service game.
I'm glad you mentioned the character designs because that is very true in today's landscape. Concords art style, aesthetic or whatever its called, does not make me want to engage with this ip at all. I merely tried the beta cause it was free. And 2 matches was more than enough
F2P would be too drastic imo. The game’s substance seems too be very solid, and that’s what counts in the long run.
Instead, Sony could push its higher PS Plus tiers by bringing Concord to them.
The poor people out there who already spent money on it could get free cosmetics and 3 months of PS Plus Premium access.
Just a flop all round. Shame considering the clear amount of effort but this is a disaster. This is the end result of years worth of development time on a genre that will be left behind by the time it releases. It’s like starting to make an extraction shooter these days, you cannot predict what will blow up in the meantime and it’s very very hard to be ahead of the curve.
@TheTraditional - Don't know about the game, but Haven is far more secured than Firewalk in case Fairgames fails hard as Concord. Haven is developing a lot of cloud, AI and back end tools that supposedly other Sony Studios will use in game development in the future.
Pull the plug, give people their money back. Then announce Naughty Dogs multiplayer and hand it over to Firewalk to maintain and build upon, with Naughty Dogs supervision of course.
This game is E.T for modern audiences.
It doesn't matter if it's a good game or a bad game. It's simply a game that already existed, went over the fad, and came out the other side almost a decade ago. This game is the poster child of what happens when design by committee is executed to try to attempt riding a fad to the money train. I can't even fault the devs, they were Bungie offshoots doing an indie thing back when Overwatch was the bees knees. But WTF did Sony think this thing was so amazing in 2023 they needed to buy the whole company, the IP, AND make it their keynote focus of 2024? We could feel bad for an indie that just didn't get it a decade ago if it bombed as it was, but Sony tried to make this the face of their platform for reasons unimaginable. Even Xbox didn't go that far with Redfall and they had literally nothing else. And for all its flaws, that was actually more unique than this.
I mean, anything’s possible… but it’s highly unlikely. Trouble is, I can see exactly the same thing happening with Fair Game$ too.
I’d imagine that Marathon will fare a bit better… but I wouldn’t place any money down on that hitting in the same way Destiny did. Factions 2 probably would’ve clicked with the audience but Bungie gonna Bungie I guess 🤷♂️
Good article. I agree with the proposed correlation between Sony’s first party silence and the resulting impression that live service is all they’re working on. For the asking price, I think a campaign of some sort would have went a long way to giving players a more immediate sense of value. As for the question, this thing is unfortunately dead. I’ve seen bigger numbers show up to the local battle of the bands on a Tuesday night. Cut the losses and move on. And maybe start planning a heck of a showcase before the end of the year.
I enjoy games that I don’t need to rely on other, real, people to enjoy. If that’s the case and the audience isn’t there, I’ve pretty much rented it because once the servers go it’s done.
MAG
Brink
Drawn to Death
Lawbreakers
Radical Heights
The Culling 2
Evil Dead
Evolve
That’s just off the top of my head and I’m not even scratching the surface. It’s a minefield and I’m flabbergasted that Sony are still chasing that live service cash despite the risk, and knowing full well that their best games are all single player experiences.
Helldivers 2 was an outlier, but look how the perception of it has changed since release? I actually bought it and haven’t played for months due to the various issues and lack of enthusiasm from the fanbase.
Compare that to Returnal, a roguelike with a modest budget and excellent multiplayer community which doesn’t even need an online connection to enjoy. It’s not even a close thing.
@TheTraditional The whole setup and presentation of this monstrosity called „Fairgame$“ makes me want to avoid any articles, videos and other media surrounding it.
"The PlayStation maker needs live service to bankroll its extortionately expensive single player narratives..."
I respectfully reject this reasoning wholeheartedly. If PlayStation's spending on single-player games have reached such a ludicrous cost that they need live services to help pay for them, then the solution is to dramatically reign in the scope and technical prowess of a lot of these games. The Last of Us: Part 2, Ragnarok, Forbidden West, and Spider-Man 2 had fat and fluff on them that could have been easily trimmed to create better and more cost-effecient games. We don't need things like Concord and Fairgames around because someone at Guerrilla made the useless decision to add hair follicles to Aloy's face and body or someone at Insomniac thought it would be engaging to play as Peter Parker so we can pick up literal garbage in an apartment.
There’s a chance. If I was Sony, I’d do a creative marketing goodwill bundle with it in some capacity. Do something a bit “out there” to get word out about it in a positive way. The negative word of mouth is hurting it more than anything
I played the beta both weekends. That was all I needed to see to know the game wasn't going to find an audience.
The fact it took 8 years and reportedly $100mm to make a multiplayer suite that's lacking in features N64 games had out the box is mind boggling. It's "this must be a money laundering scheme" territory.
Stuff like this used to be the extra mode in full single player titles. Forget the gameplay, the features and modes are nothing special. Nothing it "adds" to the genre is as exhilarating or innovative as we were led to believe prior to launch.
Forget all the window dressing design choices (as those are subjective) for a second. The ACTUAL GAMEPLAY does nothing new. There's not a SINGLE gameplay feature I saw and thought, "That's cool. I wish other games had that." Not one. THAT'S one of its largest problems. It's stale.
The other is that Sony COMPLETELY botched the unveiling and marketing. All they've pushed is how this is some sort of cinematic experience with deep lore and amazing characters... all relegated to weekly cutscene drops. WHAT IS THAT?! That is absolutely meaningless.
The one arena I can recall was some sort of space port. It'd be amazing to play through that in multiplayer if I had A SINGLE IOTA of context. Think of how AWESOME it is to jump into Star Wars Battlefront and play in places YOU HAVE EMOTION ATTACHED TO. Concord completely and utterly lacks any such attachment because we were robbed of that context.
Meanwhile, it brings up the another problem: this is a hero shooter where LITERALLY EVERYONE is on the same side. AND YET... they are fighting mirror image copies of one another. Why? What's the explanation? Why are my friends fighting themselves? It makes no gotdamm sense. Is this explained in a cutscene I wasn't privy to?
This should have been a squad-based co-op shooter with a big storyline. Let each mission be you picking a squad of teammates (either AI or your actual friends) and planning your approach and pulling off heists and causing chaos across the galaxy. GIVE US STAKES. GIVE US PURPOSE. Then, within missions, have characters be able to take special routes or activate synergies with allies so that a) replayability increases naturally and b) make the crew matter. Make it like a co-op Halo campaign (or Mass Effect mission) where your crew choices dictate story elements or mission outcomes OR SOMETHING.
You take that sorta game as the base and you can copy and paste what is being sold today as the add-on multiplayer suite. Like TLOU Factions or Goldeneye or Halo (or any countless number of games before it), you'd give yourself a chance to capture more hearts and minds by casting a broader net. (Or at the very least make it a genre of shooter that is underserved on consoles like an extraction shooter.)
As it stands, it's friends shooting their doppelgängers to make numbers tick up in bland and uninspired spaces. These characters are thieves and scoundrels yet spend their time doing no thieving or conniving or anything.
As designed, it was never going to succeed. And I stand by that.
As for the business side, they should NOT have designed it as a paid multiplayer suite. They should have been F2P and had a "single payment gets you everything forever" option the way Smite has done for literal years.
They copied gameplay ideas but did not pay any attention to business models that ACTUALLY work in today's market.
It is, top to bottom, an abysmal mismanagement of resources and talent.
@colonelkilgore I'll take it a step further by saying I'm skeptical of all of their live service projects now because I believe PlayStation have inherently bad instincts when it comes to them. I think they got really lucky with Helldivers II, but everything else revolving around this live service initiative has been one embarrassing failure after another. They couldn't even make a good judgment call on which team to acquire for help with Bungie.
@DDDD Honestly they went about it the wrong way perhaps and made it too ambitious (ND) but at the same time, didn’t they know coming out of the gate that it might force them to become a gaas studio (if not just part of it)? One has to wonder if it would’ve been awesome despite all the criticisms that Bungie was throwing towards it. all the fans really wanted was an updated factions including tlou2 mechanics, but that game came from an earlier era without all the focus on gaas and I see how they might struggle with how to monetize factions 2.0 properly.
Agreed with all points, Sammy.
It's a decent game that many people didn't want.
I enjoyed what I played of it. Some of the characters were likeable, but most are forgettable. The universe itself I thought was very interesting though. I loved hovering around the galaxy map reading the lore. I'd definitely enjoy spending more time there.
I can't help but think how a campaign at launch along with the hero shooter mode, while a big ask, might have pulled in more people.
I was thinking that at this point it needs a big reset along the lines of A Realm Reborn.
Something drastic like killing off the crew members nobody is playing as and then a fun 10 hour revenge campaign with a new crew.
It would take years to do it though, so it's not likely to happen.
At this point if you're Sony it's probably better to push an epic showcase with some big reveals in September. Generate some goodwill, then put Concord on Plus and go from there.
@jrt87 @RBMango 1000% agreed. Sony's inability to budget accordingly for realistic sales potential is not a problem solved by making more profitable service games to generate funding. It's a problem solved by properly budgeting accordingly for realistic sales potential. They celebrated spending $100M on a game. Then boasted about spending $300M. How about: Don't?
@jrt87 > 100? LOL, 20 year old PC games have more people playing on Steam. Contrast to FFXIV where when the server hiccups, you end up #800+ in the queue to get back in, and that's just on your one shard on a random weeknight.
Not gonna lie, it blows my mind that more than half the respondents say "pull the plug." The game hasn't even been out a week! I personally don't have any interest in this game, but people need to learn how to not be, at best, defeatist and, at worst, sadistic.
@Shepherd_Tallon A Realm Reborn involved remaking the entire game from scratch. An MMO with hundreds of millions invested in IT capacity built on a #1 IP franchise is worth putting that money into. A generic hero shooter? Doesn't seem worth the cash.
More Concord articles on this site than people playing the game. (I own and enjoy it btw )
@Johnnycide I wish there was a way for people to play MP games into perpetuity even if the devs stop supporting it. MAG was too early for its time and honestly, I think it would fit right into the modern mp landscape. but admittedly it was most fun if you had org sized clans playing against each other. lone wolf enjoyment was still limited.
You nailed it when you said about if they were telling fans about other projects coming in terms of SP games then it would have been less hate and more indifference like with Helldivers. That’s why this game has failed chiefly. Hard not to feel for the devs
@MFTWrecks dude, you have to relax. you sound way too angry about Concord, lol. I think it’s a fun title but they really needed to have a single player or pve modes coming out of the gate, that’s probably more constructive than weekly story vignettes.
Just wait until Season 1 adds a toaster man tank character and Concord goes on to sell three concordillion copies.
Nothing will save it. I doubt Sony will even let it go F2P since that trick rarely works. Sony is much more prone to killing things now. Somebody over the years should have realized it was awful and stopped it. I guess now people need to pay attention and not let a bad project move on. Hopefully this will lead to more scrutiny and actually good games. It's time to be tough again and stop wasting money.
Agreed Sony playing all it's cards so close to its chest, refusing to engage with the audience, is gonna result in more pushback with each individual flop. People have short memories. Give them something shiny to look forward to, and they won't get out the pitchforks when they see something they don't like.
Nah, core gameplay isn't engaging enough and character design isn't attractive enough.
This isn't a No Man's Sky/Cyberpunk situation, where the core gameplay was solid and they just needed time to fix things, this is a real design problem and the only solution is to scrap all, like they did with FF14 1.0
This game is being relentlessly mocked on every PC gaming subreddit: r/pcgaming r/pcmasterrace r/steam etc.
If this game was PS5 only at least the optics could have been somewhat saved and at worst it would have just been a Starhawk or Destruction All-Stars level of failure because at least the PS5 player numbers would have been obfuscated. But the transparency of Steam's numbers has done far more damage to the game and is actively discouraging anyone from even giving it a chance. Even if the gameplay is as solid as people claim, the game being seen as "dead" can never be shaken off thanks to Steam numbers.
Sony is very greedy which makes the Bloodborne situation worse. They greenlit a full remake of Demon Souls which was shocking but not of Bloodborne. Everybody will buy Bloodborne. It's a pile of cash that Sony is ignoring for some reason. But they spent money on this game. Nothing makes sense now.
If they released/announced Concord along with an announcement of one of their tentpole IPs, or something from Naughty Dog, it would've been a different outcome. As stated in the article, it is a symbol of the live service model, which is fine in itself as a second pillar, but it is seen as replacing what PS fans loves about Playstation.
Also, for me at least, and others who don't have PS Plus, there is an additional cost. Concord does look slick, well made with high production values, but it's only available if one has one of these online membership thingies. So immediately 40% or whatever the value is have no interest in it.
Never say never, but I don't see it personally. Reconfiguring to f2p would take more resources and frustrate original buyers who were excited to avoid that. Just have to learn from it. They also spent more marketing this than astro bot which i think is a mistake as astro has mass appeal, but understandable being a new IP. Sony used to feel cutting edge in the 90s and 2000s, Wipeout, tomb raider, FF7, resident evil.. so many more. They were leading pop culture, lately it feels like they're following.
Let's be honest. It isn't failing or could never fail because of all the online vitriol, the online vitriol was because it was always destined to fail as no one wanted the damn game to begin with. Same as SSKTJL. These could've turned out to be genuinely great, but your audience is already limited by the lack of interest to begin with.
But it's hard to make a game people want, and it's especially hard to do that with a live service game. And in a world of copying stuff, it's a huge ass risk to copy something with a 4 year dev cycle, as the thing you are copying might be as good as used toilet paper by the time you release anyway.
In some alternate universe Rocksteady made a single player Suicide Squad game with some online modes and a cosmetic store tacked on to please WB/shareholders/whoever. And Concord was a hit tv show that got adapted into a game that people wanted to play. But at least in our universe some devs got things spot on over the last few years 👍
can't win 'em all 🙄
Hopefully it gets discounted or goes free to play. Its a shame but I hope people whom are playing are enjoying
Start by making it F2P. Plan a big update with several new characters and new modes; shift the marketing to that update and stop wasting it on YouTube ads. Make those characters actually cool, and — more importantly — give them unique play styles that are visually apparent and different from the competition. Get some brand synergy going (Kratos outfit, RYNO weapon skin — hell, let's say you get an exclusive weapon in Helldivers 2 if you've played Concord). If they have the time, put out a promotional anime (worked wonders for Cyberpunk). If nothing else works, bring it to Xbox and/or Nintendo at minimal costs and see if you can sell it to different markets.
It's never going to be that massive, but I'm sure they can get it somewhere sustainable.
Should have put a cloud version on Switch in today’s partner direct, maybe that could have saved it.
But probably not.
Are you serious? Nothing can save this pile of agenda driven garbage.
Gamers dont want to be lectured, period.
"you’re not going to find any of the characters from Concord on PornHub"
Yikes what a disturbing visual with these characters 🤢
But I say just pull the plug and use what you learn to make sure this doesn't happen again. This game couldn't even get as many players as Gollum, this will go down as PlayStation's biggest failure but luckily we got Astro Bot next month!
Should of concentrated there recourses on already own ip socom
@Stevemalkpus Or let's look at what's happened and see what can be done?
The amount of vitriol for this game that I'm seeing is unreal. It's not a bad game at all.
I think Concord can be saved. But it is questionable if Sony is capable of doing it. And it is questionable if they want to invest the money for it.
Free to play would help, but ultimately it has nothing making it stand out. May be make a movie out of it and then rerelease it.
Push Square really getting mileage out of this game. Probably more than the actual players are.
@Johnnycide I agree with some of your points, but the trouble with your argument is that Returnal may be a great game but it won’t have made Sony much money in total, even if the budget was lower. Estimates and leaks show around half a million sales initially and just over 1 million total many of which would have been cheaper sales. This is small fry for Sony with no recurring revenue.
Your list names some failures but meanwhile Sony can SEE on their own PSN balance sheets the huge amounts of money COD, Fortnite, Genshin, FIFA/sports, GYA Online, HSR, Apex and many more make for their publishers and they understandably want a larger slice of that pie.
I might not like it personally, like you I prefer full paid games, but it makes a lot of business sense to try and get a live service hit. You only need one to really pop-off to succeed.
Hopefully the team doesn't end up laid off.
On another article, it is said that Foamstar is going f2p because it’s failing to keep pace. So it’s possible to change the business model and Concord should go that way.
Should have called it Boeing
"The PlayStation maker needs live service to bankroll its extortionately expensive single player narratives, but its core audience has utterly rejected the idea and it needs evangelists to standout in a sector already well-dominated by juggernaut brands."
A well written article, but this comment is quite ill judged. As far as I know their single player games usually, if not always, make a profit. Plus, if their major push into live service were to be successful, there's very little chance they would invest any of that money into single player story driven games. If anything it would make them spend less on the games we love. They didn't exactly put any of the billions they've made into interesting smaller titles, like the ones Japan Studio made did they, and it's not like any of those projects were high cost or risk. The more these leechy live service borefests flop, the better for the industry and us gamers in my opinion.
You can't save bland / unappealing character design when the game already out in the market. It doesn't matter if this game became F2P either when people wouldn't play with bland af characters. Heck, i bet a lot of people doesn't even remember the characters name.
This is the reason why fighting games put a lot of focus when designing characters. One of the biggest key to success for fighting games are depends on how people react to the characters. If the majority doesn't impress when they see the character for the first time then that's a bad sign for the game. SF 6 for example, Capcom spent 2 years just to designed newcomers like Jamie or Kimberly. From concept to implementation, they keeps changing the design until they see the one that looks good and memorable.
https://www.eventhubs.com/news/2023/may/14/capcom-sf6-characters-concept-implementation/#:~:text=Capcom
I don't know what Firewalk producer, director, and artist thinks when they created these bland af characters and believe people would love them.
So, i think this game is cooked. It's too late to save it.
Concord: Foamstars 2
When are you going to open a church? You've already devoted your life to concord and preach to us all about it.
@DDDD if last of us online was bad would people still wish it wasn't cancelled? also i loved socom , but people keep bringing up series that barely sold in the past. killzone , reistance , those games barely sold over 2 million copies.
@TrickyDicky99 exactly this. Sony seem to have completely forgotten the concept of loss leading games, that offer a pool of interesting titles, giving people something to pick up when they buy the console. I think dropping the smaller Japan Studio titles was a bigger mistake than anyone realises too, as it offered an extra bump of interesting titles to look out for in second hand shops and sales, inadvertently helping the industry tick over a little more, create innovation and keep people like me more invested. I barely even look at PS5 shelves when I pop into a game shop anymore.
Pu$h$quare milking this games demise , i don’t blame you guys , it’s just funny
@Johnnycide “ MAG
Brink
Drawn to Death
Lawbreakers”
dude , i miss edgy games like these so much
@twitchtvpat Selling 2-3 million copies are nothing to ashame of.
But I think what @DDDD want to say is when comes to live service games, Sony has more chances with their existing IP like Socom, Killzone, or Resistance that already has a lot of fanbase. But with new IP like Concord, they have zero fanbase to rely on. You can't expect a big portion of Overwatch, Apex, or Fortnite fanbase to play Concord when their main game are free and doesn't require PSN and PS+ to play.
Yes, it can! Here's my 4 Year roadmap of what the Devs should do.
In other words, hire me.
@kentuckyfr1ed I'm completely relaxed. I use caps for emphasis since commenting here doesn't have formatting options.
When something like the Finals and the First Descendant do it so well in their respective genres it's unbelievable Sony managed to miss the target by this much in the hero shooter genre 😂
Should just pull the plug asap.
@RBMango Totally agree with that sentiment.
Except for the large-scale Legend of Zelda titles, Nintendo doesn't spend nearly as much on games and turns out amazing titles regularly - proving that you don't need to spend eye-watering amounts to make a great game.
The problem is that Sony decided it wanted its games to be "summer blockbuster movies" with the budget to boot and got rid of the games that Nintendo still makes.
I bet Astro Bot didn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars and I bet it will be one of Sony's most memorable games this generation!
I have experience from the open Beta. While it may be well executed, the game is derivative and badly designed.
Identity -
Characters -
Meta -
Gameplay -
I don’t think the above are fixable without a significant re-work of the game that wouldn’t be worth the candle. Sony should just give it up, take the L, and figure out how to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to Marathon and FairgameDollarsign.
@WhensDinner @Realist "Push Square really getting mileage out of this game. Probably more than the actual players are."
The game just released, negative or positive why wouldn't they write more about a new PlayStation first party exclusive? If TLOU 3 had been the one released there rightfully would have been twice as many articles as Concord currently has.
I feel like the only way that Concord could have been saved would have been for Sony/Firewalk to be more open about its development. If they'd shown off the game and talked about their monetisation approach earlier, they could have had time to take on feedback and course-correct to some extent.
At this point, the damage is done.
They would need to rework all the characters to not be so lame and ga. I don't get the appeal of the game. I also laugh at who would want to buy cosmetics for these characters, good luck with that one.
It can't be saved and its going to be dead pretty soon. There's too much coming out and Marvel Rivals is coming soon so Concord stands no chance.
Lol nope. Give it a few more weeks and it will be forgotten about, until the game awards come around and people briefly remember it for being a failure before returning to the void indefinitely.
I could be wrong but the author seems to think that detractors of this game have some sort of vendetta against it and that's partly the reason why it's failed as hard as it has.
But the writing was on the table as soon as it was announced, it's general reception has been a collective groan the entire time, and the player numbers reflect that.
It's unprecedented for such a gigantic name backing it but that doesn't change the fact that nobody wanted this, and Sony and Firewalk are just gonna have to take the loss here and try a different strategy.
In a world where Overwatch exists and is F2P, in a world where Marvel is doing one and it is ALSO free to play…
…why would anyone touch this, let alone pay real money for it?
As someone who does like the game it does sadden me that it’s failing and I agree with everything in this article. Realistically I don’t think it can be saved but crazier things have happened. In my opinion there’s a couple of things they can do.
I don’t think F2P can fix it. Many failed live service games have tried and it only delayed the inevitable, and if that’s the case for concord, you might as well try to offer and capitalize off a model that your players already like which many hero shooters don’t have.
That’s a really good point that the huge PR emphasis on live service whilst the single player development teams stay silent is largely to blame for this disaster.
If Sony would have been upfront about the SP games in development and just said that there’s a few little service games on the side, then the vitriol would have been less
Died faster than Steve Irwin in a stingray tank.
Maybe the special edition controllers will be on for a deep discount, I always need a spare.
So finally the penny's starting to drop... everyone keeps hoping this was a Jimbo decision, but Hermen has his signature all over this; as he did with many of the decisions that have been made since 2019. The fundamental problems with Concord are (i) deciding on the MP/GaaS strategy without brining the player base with it; (ii) buying off-spec game studios on a promise of an actual game; (iii) radio silence from Sony about what it was since they acquired; (iv) not advertising Concord until their conference just a few months before hand - and then completely mis-handling the entire thing in such a horrifyingly amateur way; (iv) not making it inherently FUN or ATTRACTIVE or NOVEL to bring people in; (v) not having a financial strategy, and one that appears to consider hardly anyone buying it; and finally (vii) not actually allowing enough time between the beta and release to try and rectify issues. The game may be ok - but it's literally like it's been brought out to die in a very public and humiliating way. If they didn't know this was going to happen, WHAT THE... are they doing over there in SIE HQ?
Ah well, at least we got FairgameDollarsign coming.
Imo, what the game desperately needa are:
1) better character customization, particularly actually good looking skins that woudl convince me on continuing playing matches to get them (the ones we got aren't that great to say the least)
2) more variants. The fact that there's only one variant in this game is insane and makes me wonder if they only thought up this idea at the last second.
3) PvE content. This is their chance to do something that Blizzard failed to promise for OW2. Make us experience the adventures the characters are going through instead of making us wait each week for a cutscene we can just watch on youtube.
Additionally, i want to see more wacky characters. For a game that takes place in space, there's a big lack of "glup shiittos", something that even star wars hunters is somewhat nailing at better. There's only three characters in the game I would even consider unique base don their appearance while the rest are either human or too "human"-like.
Make it a ps plus extra game and give preorder-ers the value of the game as in-game currency. Open the shop early
@kentuckyfr1ed
I think many of us would gladly have paid premium price for a TLOU Online game. Sony would certainly earned back more money than now with Concord. I really don't see the issue why ND would struggle to maintain a live service game and making new SP content. Isn't that what they want in the gaming industry? More jobs? More people to hire?
Pffffff! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Anyway, no.
@twitchtvpat
Yes maybe those series sold not that much copies. But how many will Concord sell now you think? Plus: why did Sony buy Bungie for so much money? Let them make a good Socom game again and let Bungie show to Sony they are worth that much money. Also why have IP's in your inventory and never make a new game for it? It doesn't make sense.
@PuppetMaster
Yes! Exactly! Those series earned their fanbase. How long are gamers crying for a new Socom game? A new Resistance game? Hell Sony even cancelled a new Twisted Metal game. Why? They could earn so much money with it, yet they refuse and pump millions of dollars in a game that's taken 8 years to make. And yes i get it. Socom and Resistance were once a new IP also. So we need new original games, new franchises. But Concord.. Sorry it's just not what gamers want these days. Cringing hero shooter, with cringy characters and humor.
Before anything else, I want to note something about our friends at Firewalk. They have a Director of IP, who previously was the Narrative Lead and Narrative Design Lead, who has never worked in video games before. Sounds like the wrong kind of person to draft compelling worldbuilding fluff for a live service game, an extremely difficult genre to deliver it in.
The Lead Character Designer, meanwhile, was actually Principle Gameplay Design during the first half of the development cycle before inexplicably being promoted/moved to his present position. This person has never previously held a character design position (gameplay and QA only), before somehow being moved to lead on character design, a crucial part of any hero shooter. For a big budget AAA game.
These people were appointed before Sony bought the studio. I cannot comprehend why Sony decided to buy in, when they must have looked at the key pawns in play and must have seen such weird decision-making. This is one of your tentpole titles for 2024, and you let a guy with zero character design roles lead on the creation of your heroes, arguably the most important part of a hero shooter? It's beyond belief.
I think Firewalk likely needs a thorough clear out plus professionalization, but then if Sony bought this studio in its current state and ignored all these glaring issues, then I doubt they're capable of bringing the right kinds of changes. Best possible scenario here is that Firewalk get demoted to support roles for the big first party studios, and get nowhere near the tables where creative and business decisions are being made.
"You’re not going to find any of the characters from Concord on PornHub. And that, whether you like to admit it or not, is a genuine problem."
Didn't think I'd read that this morning 😂
@Old-Red
Couldnt have said it better myself (and was going to try until i read your comment).
If this had been a success, no way the money would have gone into anything but live service.
They would have more likely scrapped a single player game, to put the dev team onto another live service game.
Sony said this live service is good for single player games as it will provide bigger budgets rubbish a while ago, and i think it was a bad idea from a marketing point of view because it just riled people up against this game even more!
Just gotta cut your loses. I'm not sure how well it'll do going free to play (and it'll probably piss off the few actual fans the game has if they turn around and suddenly hand it out for free. I feel like both Concord and Sony were too stupid to correct ship and have now got to take their lumps for it.
Maybe they do and I missed it, but Sony (or pushsquare on their behalf) needs to do a survey like Capcom did a few months back. 'Unique and attractive characters' was the second largest want worldwide.
As for the article and Concord itself, what 'we' as hardcore enthusiasts say and think is irrelevant. We are likely not even 1% of the playerbase, and success is not dependent on us. We're, I suppose, whales in Sony's ecosystem, but we need not be catered to.
It's the 'normies'/casuals - the regular Joe's, the FIFA/Madden/COD/Fortnite crowd - who dictate whether a game like this is succesful, and they overwhelmingly just did not care. Why? Because the characters all either intentionally or unintentionally range from uninspired to absolutely hideous. Because marketing wasn't good enough and lacked the magic that Valve and Blizzard were able to wield for TF2 and Overwatch in the run up to release. And because Concord was entirely ill-conceived, from start to finish.
In the year Overwatch released (to a captive audience of Blizzard fans, yes, but surely Sony 1st party titles have a captive audience of Playstation fans too?), there were nine shorts released to hype up its attractively and thoughtfully designed characters. Hype was properly built up as well. Meanwhile, Concord dropped its stupid hot sauce trailer a few months before release, aping the worst parts of Guardians of the Galaxy in the worst possible way. Literally the best way to describe Concord's visual design is to just say 'GotG but you ordered it from Temu'.
Budget was spent on these disastrously stupid 'weekly vignettes' instead. We have seen two of them now, plus the opening cinematic, but all three amount to a handful of the 'heroes' standing/sitting around, rattling off a script that you'd imagine was rejected by James Gunn during the first draft of GotG. The scenes all look very expensive - mo-capped and everything - but they amount to ugly characters of the same tired archetypes (e.g. Budget Drax) sitting in the same room spouting the same type of trite humour and context-less worldbuilding that you need the equally ill-conceived 'Galaxy Guide' for to understand.
Again, an experienced 'Director of IP' would have understood that this would not work at all. A competent 'Lead character designer' would not have signed off on these characters unless they were willfully obtuse or following their own, personal design ideology. But no.
Overwatch built ridiculous amounts of hype off the back of these well-written, stylish action-filled teasers - and I personally know teens who got into Overwatch at release thanks to the teasers, and are still playing OW2 to this day. Concord, meanwhile, has players holding the skip button en masse because there's just nothing of any value there. Watch any pre-release Overwatch character trailer three times in a row, then watch any of the Concord vignettes three times in a row. Which one was more compelling?
I think most punters on Push Square could have told Sony and Firewalk all of this, but instead they dug their heads in the sand, and spent eight years and hundreds of millions on this humongous dud. And we didn't even get to one of the biggest problems yet, which is the set of market conditions Concord is going up against. Dominated by F2P juggernauts. Everyone either is deeply, deeply invested in a hero shooter already (e.g. 8 years in Overwatch) or supremely sick of them, given how many came and crashed. Battleborn, Evolve, Lawbreakers, etc.
Firewatch was formed to chase the hot trend, took way too long to release a mostly-competent-but-unremarkable product, and then finds that it is played by mere hundreds of paying customers in a market that is now both cold and completely saturated by established competitors.
I can't wait for the Youtube essays, of which there will be many over the coming years. Lawbreakers - a much better shooter - is still remembered because of its much less spectacular failure, so I can imagine Concord might do even better on that front.
Can it be saved? The real question is, should it be saved, and the answer is 'no'. Hermen Hulst would need to have a full kilogram of butter on his head to throw even one extra Dollar this game's way. The way forward is clear; skeleton crew pushes out the laughable roadmap, game comes to PS Plus along with the pointless cash shop, game goes F2P, servers are shut down, and Sony pretends this never, ever happened.
@DDDD Helghast and Chimera design alone are so much better than the entire Concord characters that looks like a GotG reject. I just can't believe anyone from Sony looked at Concord and say "Ow yeah, we will printed a lot of money with this game!".
@jrt87 I just saw the tweet from Firewalk devs who called people that didn't like Concord as "talentless freaks". Not just that tweet was a PR nightmare for a game that really needs players to stay alive, but it shows a devs who doesn't want to hear any feedbacks. Firewalk definitely isn't worthy as Sony 1st party studio.
If Hermen Hulst saw pre builds of the game and thought "we have something really special here" then I can say with confidence Sony will face way more difficulties ahead and it's is very disturbing
Let's not pretend that it also isn't a massive flop on PS5 as well, it's currently not even in the top 50 on the UK PS store, behind the likes of Train Sim World 5. This game is effectively dead already, with its only slight chance being it going f2p but even then I doubt it'll survive as not only is it's character roster unappealing but we're about to head into the busy part of the year for game releases.
I'll be stunned if this isn't shut down within 6 months
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
A new flop incoming really soon...PS5 pro..
I just don’t see the market for a game that is very similar to Valorant or overwatch. These games have huge cult like followings and massive pro gamer tournaments and communities. Expecting to crash that party with a new game that is basically a copy paste was never going to be successful.
Some originality in game design and art style would have helped.
@Arxagelos Do we know it was Hermen Hulst who pushed to acquire Firewalk? Or Jim Ryan, as part of his grand live-service plan?
For now I'd like to give Hermen Hulst the benefit of doubt. Let's not forget he led a studio that gave us Killzone and Horizon.
If it went free to play then maybe it might stand a chance. They would have to monetize the old rusty sheriffs badge out of it but I hope it can be saved for the 3.5 people that are toughing it out.
Could they make it free to play for like a couple of characters until you rank them up to level 5 or 10. That would give more people an incentive to at least try the game and decide if it's for them (although I'm not sure if you rank / level up characters up like that in concord). Progress could then be carried over to the main game if you decide to purchase the full title.
I do think the article has probably hit the nail on the head. A lot of people will see this as one of the poster boys for Sony's push for live service. With a lack of a clear roadmap telling gamers what else is coming in the near future, then this is getting more of a reaction compared to if it had dropped between two major AAA releases. Because by all accounts, this isn't a bad game - it's just coming across as quite generic in a sea of live service games with established player bases from other studios
@Ralizah ... or maybe sony will only do even less risky projects in the foreseeable future to recover the losses of the failed projects ( last of us factions, bungie, concord, ... )
My god, the game's dead. It was over before it even released. Shut up about it already. xD It will go on for another year or so, but this game has zero chance in surviving. Glad a majority aren't buying into this live service nonsense. People should have learnt their lesson after Suicide Sqaud.
"you’re not going to find any of the characters from Concord on PornHub. And that, whether you like to admit it or not, is a genuine problem."
You're damn right!!!
what cracked me up was alleged dev attacking people as they worked hard and everyone should love what they made. one the world dosent work like that. Second i grew up in comunist country (im in my 50s) and there were hard working people doing made up jobs. worked all week and well didnt produce anything. if you build a bridge car crosses it falls down doisent matter how hard you worked.
NOPE, especially that this game had its developers lash out against players on social media. There's no hope for this game
Swap out all the characters and replace with 16 famous Playstation ones. From Alloy to Nathan Drake and beyond. They'd never do it but I'd bet a dollar that it would get more people to give it a go.
@Futureshark There are 34 rules when creating video games characters
the thing for me with Concord is that, at its core, it's a fun game to play so they have a foundation to work off of. Whether people would care if they went F2P, idk.
The answer to this question is simple. People had already decided that the game would be a failure before it was even released, some by Xbox fanboys, others by people who simply hate everything and the rest followed the trend, it's the so-called herd effect... we've already seen this happen with the game "Days Gone"... this proves that people outsourced their own opinion.
No. Let it die, just like the other worthless live service games; they belong in the trash. The more of these games that fail, the better.
I think a huge part of the problem is the industry is now such a big money earner, it's now so corporate, that we can't have a game like Resistance sell 2 million copies and still get a trilogy and a portable spin-off. That's no longer seen as viable. Big money gets thrown around to buy IP and studios and that big money expects big returns.
And yeah it does mean that we can get more visually impressive games, we can get stupidly big open-worlds. But it's also damaging. It stifles creativity and leads to safe bets or chasing golden geese, the current goose being GaaS.
It's a shame because, ugly characters and GotG vibes aside, I like what Concord is trying to do with it's world. It's certainly unique and recognisable. I want that sort of risk-taking and I want to support it. But the GaaS side just feels egregiously corporate and hollow. They don't feel about having fun anymore. Multiplayer modes used to feel like an added value and fun way to extend the game. But all this live service feels like it's trying to trap you. To lock you in so the shareholders and suits can squeeze a few more pennies out of you and your friends.
Honestly, with Concord, same characters, same world as a 10-20hr single player campaign with a multiplayer mode and I'd have bought this. And I still would if they made exactly that with the same assets to recoup some losses.
I feel sorry for the devs as they obviously did put some effort and hard work into the game, but unfortunately I am not going to buy a game I'm not interested in just because I feel sorry for them.
The problem with this game really is just the concept in general, there's nothing really new or interesting about it, you need something to stand out especially in what is already a crowded genre.
From the outside looking in - I'm someone that doesn't play any multiplayer games at all outside of Final Fantasy XIV and games I play co-op with my partner - I think this one is cooked. By far the biggest problem with the game - again, I don't play these games - is the hideous character design.
Outside of the fun pink haired girl with the pointy ears I haven't seen a single character in this game that didn't make me grimace. It's not that they're ugly. It's that they seem so uninspired. No joke, when I first saw this game without sound on the video, and I saw one of the dudes, I thought this game had a character creator and they were showing me the generic male model before the player made their avatar.
Overwatch has cool characters, even if you don't want to play the game. Even Fortnite has a style that pops. Think of iconic character select screens. Street Fighter II, Tekken, even Twisted Metal. Every character has a theme, an appeal, something.
This looks like a bunch of people wearing garish clothes and little else. Oh, and there's a big yellow cylinder robot.
It's unpleasant to look at. It's unfathomable to me that these characters made it past first draft. I have no idea how anyone signed off on this. You couldn't market a single one of these people. You couldn't make a Funko Pop out of them. It's a mess.
Even if the game played badly, or it was mediocre, characters that people wanted to play as would get people playing. People play all sorts of rubbish for cool character designs. This is the inverse of that. Mechanically sound but utterly bereft of a single moment of aesthetic wonder. It looks like a hero shooter designed by A.I.
I don't think even a stint on PlayStation Plus could save it.
@Yagami It was a dud but compared to this flop it's probably looked upon more favourably.
@Ainu20 I wouldn't give Hulst free pass on this
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GWD1y0zXcAAzc6e?format=jpg&name=large
@Arxagelos Well that looks pretty bad but on the other hand, I will never forget how Sir Alex Ferguson once claimed Phil Jones could become the greatest Manchester United player ever. Everyone is allowed the occasional error of judgement.
I will admit I'm being extremely generous to Hermen Hulst here.
That's certainly the vibe I get; as soon as the trailer switched to gameplay in the trailer it just became white noise to me.
@Yagami I didn't dislike it either but it didn't land with many folk. At this current time however, I think it'd be far more wise than going for generic rip off tripe like this if they want to continue the live service push. Many folk loved Astro's Playroom for the PS cameos and something along those lines would work alot better. DLC could be Capcom, Namco characters etc.
@Arxagelos To be fair, that is a joke quote that originated from a Twitter account I follow. Hulst never said that in any interviews. Even the Twitter account that made the joke was surprised it blew up and was quoted by people as often as it has been.
Hulst seeing Concord and going "wow, let's buy this team" is enough of a big mark against him without that fake quote being attached to him. xD
No it can't be saved.
Can we just bury this game now?
Just let it go Sammy...
@DDDD trust me i bought all those games , and i'd love to bring them back just as much or even more then every one else , what i'd give to see killzone , resistance and socom in 2024 on the ps5. but also i get it , they would rather invest and take the chance on something new then something they know won't sell that well.
The next fail is going to be Fairgame$. Another crap live service game that will die in months. I hope this one is also DOA.
Marathon from Bungie maybe has some more potential as a extraction shooter. Still, i'm not too excited for that one either.
It has to die to become an example.
As much as I want to be optimistic about 'Concord,' Sony's approach to handling PC players is worrying. Unlike PlayStation users, who are often left with no choice but to adapt, PC gamers have countless alternatives. Helldivers 2 showed that even a promising game with huge potential and "crafted with passion" can be mishandled. Sony's track record with live services isn't reassuring, especially when smaller publishers continue to support older ps3 titles, meanwhile Sony is pulling the plug on anything older than few years old. If Sony can't maintain reliability, I wonder how they would
convince PC players to invest in their ecosystem.
I don't see how it will be saved. New players see the player counts. There are already people saying they get long wait times. It looks like a complete waste of $40 for any new players right now.
The first step needs to be the inclusion with all tiers of ps+.
Hopefully they reconsider the entry price on future live service attempts. Learn from this one and move on. A lot of the live service player base expects the games to be free to play and a lot of people who pay $40+ for a game dont want a live service game. They priced out the free to play crowd while offering an unappealing game to the pay up front crowd.
From what I played of the open beta, Concord is a good game. It's just not doing anything that warrants the £35 price tag. Speaking personally, I generally dip in and out of multiplayer shooters, mostly because I'm dogs**t at them nowadays, so the idea of spending that much money on something I'll likely give up on for months at a time isn't appealing.
If Concord launched with a single player campaign, it would have been received very differently.
Well we are here. Where's the person from last week that said I was wrong about this game and it was going to be a success? Probably trying to find a match in this ***** show of a game. This game failed for obvious reasons and all it did was put a rough estimate on this so called "modern audience" or "the silent scared majority that's afraid to speak up" it's less than 2000 people. You're not a majority, you're likes are main stream, boring, unappealing and ugly. Just like the modem audience
No....pull the plug down not resuscitate.
Also send Fairgame$ to the Shadow Realm as well while you're at it
@Yagami They're just too aesthetically unappealing for many people. I'd imagine many will instantly pick their phone up as soon as the non interactive cut scene rattles on and on.
These games live or die by their characters, and this game dropped the ball about as hard as conceivably possible in that regard. Unless they completely purge the existing character designs and rebuild them from the ground up, there is no saving this.
GAME OVER
you can kiss two great sony published single player games goodbye at the expense of concord's existence. this is how we should be looking at this... it is also the reason so many people were upset at jimbo's strategy and why service games are generally despised in many gaming circles. all the hate was warranted and justifed as we see it coming full circle. concord is on the same level as suicide squad. there is nothing that can save it's fate. hundreds of millions of dollars squandered.
sony has another 3 or 4 service games to writeoff over the next 4 years. keep em coming... so long as a lesson is learned here, i won't flinch.
So having played the full game for 2 hours last night I can answer the question pretty simply. No the game doesn’t need to be salvaged. If Sony and its small but core fan base such as myself can be fine with not having like overwatch player numbers and the game gets to go on for like 3-5 years? It’ll be just fine. I found myself having more fun playing it last night and playing characters like Haymar more then I’ve ever had playing overwatch probably outside of when Sombra and Ashe launched. I’ll give everyone exactly ONE point and it’s that yeah the character designs suck super bad. Outside of Haymar who I guess you could call a “waifu” I don’t care for like half of these characters and outwardly hate some of them. But with all this said I wanna say if the game was to go free to play there better be something for people like myself who paid at launch or I’ll be on the side of everyone else wanting to destroy this thing. On the other hand tho if this game shuts down in like 6 months because of the hate? Well then I’ll hate each and every single person be they here on push square or elsewhere who caused it because it’s a genuinely fun game I enjoy at the end of the day. And to me that’s all that matters. If you don’t like it then shut up and go play like Astro Bot or GOW or whatever else.
@Ryne-Gaia if it shuts down in 6 months its fact its not worth it too keep servers running. what does it matter what others think if you enjoy it. people dont want to play it whats it got to do with you.
@Ryne-Gaia Running a GaaS takes a lot of money. Less than 100 concurrent Steam players and a small loyal PS core aren't enough money, let alone for a non-battlepass/mtx model game. They can't run it at a loss and Sony doesn't have a history of running services that don't have big numbers as a favor to fans.
@Porco They'd have made more money making Gravity Rush 3 and TLG2, and making them Xbox exclusives with a Game Pass deal than buying this studio and making this game.
Still it all goes back to Ol' Jimbo. At the end of the day Concord was an indie game from some industry vets trying to follow a fad way back during the WiiU era, got lost in development hell till long after the fad expired, and for unimaginable reasons, Jimbo decided this is what to spend the whole budget on, and for even more unimaginable reasons, Jim's successors decided to market it like it was the future of PS. Maybe because they have literally nothing else at all to show other than Astrobot, probably because of Ol' Jimbo.
@Anguspuss you’re right I was maybe a little too aggressive on the what other people think part. I own up and apologize.
@NEStalgia I just feel like it’s getting way too much hate for a fine enough game I enjoy
@Ryne-Gaia Yeah, I get that. I'm a Gravity Rush fan....
Though that's sort of why live services are hated. If nobody else likes a game that you like like Gravity Rush then you never get a sequel and can only enjoy your OG game yourself. When nobody else likes a live service game you like, or even just stop spending enough money into it's "planned lifecycle", they eventually rip it away from you too.
Of course the live service aspects of GR met a similar fate....
The game just wasn't marketed correctly at all.
A 5v5 hero shooter
Teaser trailer? What could it be?
A cheeseburger in space.
Oooo new trailer? What can it be?
Wait what a funny take on guardians of the galaxy, epic adventure across the universe?
Nope, wait that's just filler, for a 5v5 hero arena shooter with 16 playable characters in which makes the cgi cut scenes they worked so hard on filler to move onto the next match.
They told.us when this live service push was happening that it would push things into new areas.
Helldivers 2 sort of did that with it's 3rd person shoot bugs with your mates and progress the war. Simple yet addictive fun.
Concord, very generic to similar to games already out there for free and reality is PlayStation fans aren't here for such games.
We already have them from 3rd party developers. Nothing new in concord.
Firewalk hired a 'Director of IP' who had never worked on a video game. Obviously the wrong person to try and match narrative to something as complex as a GAAS hero shooter.
They made a gameplay designer the lead character designer, despite him having never ever held such a role. The characters are extremely important for hero shooters, yet this set are near-universally reviled.
The game and studio just aren't up to par. Studio should never have been bought, game should have been canned.
@NEStalgia it was in production in some form since the wii u era? i did not know that! jim certainly had a big part to play, but the rest of sony HQ likely supported and encouraged this vision along with him which explains the departure of layden all too clearly.
my hope is they hit the ground hard and make it clear to their shareholders that this strategy is simply not going to work out for them and proceed to make internal changes to rectify this nightmare. if they want to dedicate 20% of their budget to a handful of service games for the sake of their shareholders, fine. but at least select those properties accordingly (gran turismo has been a service for a long time now and is doing well for them. a twisted metal GaaS project would likely have done reasonably well as well. a socom revival could have potential in this space. if they are going to take the risk, might as well go with an established IP that can generate some fanfare, instead of a generic (new) IP that looks like a side story out of guardians of the galaxy.
i would estimate that 50% of their gaming budget is currently (or was) tied up in service games — most of which are on the verge of failing if they haven't already. last of us factions and concord alone likely cost sony $500m? fairgame$ is destined to follow the same course as concord, and we haven't even considered all the (unannounced) service games behind the scenes that were cancelled a year ago (apparently 6 were canned, including the last of us). so are we talking about looses over $1b? probably.
anyways, better that they fail now than later. i hope the ps6 will be a clean slate for them and we can move on from this era of playstation.
It's exactly where it deserves to be. Who did they think would pay for it? Whoever does Market Research for these companies needs to be permanently removed from the games industry.
@Porco Yeah, it was in development 8 years according to the lead character designer (though we're talking about the guy that thought these character designs were good...), so that places it starting up in 2016......exactly when Overwatch launched lol. (HEY! That made money! Lets do that too!) At the time lots of Splatoon players on WiiU were jumping over to OW on PS4/PC and as a regular Splatoon player, you could feel the drop in match quality due to OW stealing players. Concord is literally a relic of the WiiU era.
Odd thing is Firewalk was founded 6 years ago, so who was working on this game 2 years before the studio existed? I assume they started it as a side project in Bungie before branching off to form FW just to make this game a reality lol. Kind of hilarious the whole rot of Bungie and FW ended up owned by Sony only to end up losing massive money, both.
The timeline says this probably had nothing to do with Sony until Jim saw it and thought it would be their Fortnite eating exclusive in 2022, and then doubled down on it and bought the whole company and IP in 2023. It's probably not fair to blame "SIE" for any of this. This almost certainly sits exclusively in the laps of Ryan & Hulst. They found roadkill, decided with some salt it would be marketable as a premium delicacy, then bought a semi to run it over and tenderize it. Sony "supported" them because they didn't know better and trusted the people they hired that were supposed to know, and up until then money was flowing so whatever they did must have been working. But once the costs added up and returns failed to materialize, Sony did drop the hammer, hard. But it took them far too long to realize what Jim was doing because they didn't know that business. We could see it from years ahead of the crash because we're in the market. Corp didn't know better. Remember Jim cleaned house of everyone who disagreed with him early on, like Layden, long ago, so in a building full of yes-men, Jims ideas were always sound.
My memory of Jim's Playstation will always be the bookended mental image of Concord on one side, and Shaun Layden awkwardly peddling Scuf controllers in the press booth at E3 while shuffling media around a laberynthine TLOU2 set with poorly recorded Gustavo Santaolala after Jim already half-ousted him on the other.
I feel bad for the devs a little because it's clear they're talented devs that had absolutely no idea what they were doing from a business/market perspective and lost their shirts. I just laugh at Sony who handed idiots like Jim and Herman a blank checkbook and this is what they bought with it. Both of them are marketing guys. Why would you give them blank checks and let them run the whole R&D? Marketing guys only know how to spend money. Not how to make it, and certainly not how to design product. Even bankers like Totoki have a better handle on how to use money. I knew disaster was coming the day Kaz Hirai announced retirement, and it ended up worse than I pictured.
The only thing holding them back is Hulst. That he doesn't run hardware is a very good thing and I'm glad for that. But He's still Jim's mini-me. He still needs to go. He's still going to keep chasing trends. The other problem is a lot of damage was done that can't be repaired well. Japan Studio, all the UK studios, all the VR studios, every studio that knew how to make good smaller games.....they closed it all in favor of keeping only the blockbuster teams. Not unlike Matrick's mistakes in 2010-2013, and Xbox still never properly rebuilt from it.
I think it's great. It is currently my go to shooter and I have played them all.
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