Big New PS5, PC Shooter Concord Has an Uphill Battle Ahead of It

I was invested during the cutscene at the start. Looked like it was going to be a fun space adventure game...
then they said 5v5 FPS

People point to millennials but this quippy sh*t is the fault of people older than that. Most of the corny stuff is down to Joss Whedon and we’re still apparently stuck on his writing style almost 30 years after Buffy.

Then we all remember it’s just the minority on Social media.

Sooner we stop using this rubbish, the better the world will become.

I'm not the target audience for this, I like to play actual games, not "services". But the truth is for like the past 8 years everyone has been chasing the live-service jackpot. Games like this are a dime-a-dozen and they all start to blend together. The actual core-gameplay doesn't look too bad to be fair, at least Sony were smart enough to not make a battle royale 😆

We will see. The game could potentially pick up a lot of overwatch players since that game turned into a disaster, but I doubt it. I found the vignette annoying and this style of multiplayer is not for me and it’s in a crowded space. I am, however, not the target audience so I wouldn’t be surprised if it took off.

I can think of many reasons why I am not excited about this game and one of them would get my comment removed for being "unconstructive"

The beta will be make or break for the game's reputation, I think. Fantastic gameplay can quickly overrule more surface-level criticisms.

I couldn’t get into Overwatch back in the day and I don’t care for live service games or hero shooters that require a ton of learning.

This and Marvel Rivals looked almost identical to Overwatch. No interest here.

Just what this world needs. Another generic 5v5 shooter

I really don't understand how people can be this judgmental about a game that they haven't played yet. The aesthetic is definitely a little more generic than I was expecting based on the 70's-style title-card, but the gameplay looks like it could be pretty fun.

I think it's completely reasonable that Sony would want a competitor to Microsoft's Overwatch. I actually find the visuals to this game more appealing than Overwatch, so I will definitely be checking out the beta, when it comes around.

I just have one simple question - what is the USP? Because I can't find one.

"We have Guardians of the Galaxy at home, honey."

I thought the cinematic was entertaining.

But, since we already knew it was going to be a GaaS, my interest stopped there.

It's as if Sony (as a publisher) saw what Overwatch did and wanted to copy its original success - pointless (albeit entertaining) character cinematics and all!

I feel like the most successful GaaS titles are games that don't try to copy the success of another but form their own identity that resonated with players. Being considered a "clone" of something successful isn't a great start.

Time will tell. Maybe this will be good competition for Overwatch in the end.

It's definitely a gamble.

That one comment saying it feels like a parody game is mostly on point, although I'd say it's less like a parody, and more like what I'd expect an AI to cobble together if you fed it information on the biggest games and movies from the last decade.

Guardians of the Overwatch indeed.

@nessisonett lol

I've been rewatching Buffy with my boyfriend, and it's occurred to me how the same style of dialogue I still find charming in that show annoys the heck out of me in everything I see it in today. Probably because that level of snark makes more sense for a group of media-literate teens in the 90s than it does from superheroes and aliens. Whedon shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near Disney's MCU (or, in retrospect now that we know what the man is like, most of the cast of Buffy, for that matter).

This masterpiece comes next right after I finish LOTR: Gollum and Rise of Kong

Also, it’s unfortunate the articles with “fan reaction” social media posts have become so prevalent. It captures such a small amount of the population’s reaction and doesn’t really serve to tell you much of anything. Angry social media posts about a game have “old man yells at cloud” energy and don’t do anybody any good. People constantly bemoan the state of games media and community discourse around games and articles like this just feed the fire. Just gives people who haven’t played the game a even more of a platform to be heard and encourages more negativity overall.

I certainly would have preferred Factions 2....

@Gelloh 100%. Factions 2 getting cancelled and getting this instead is a bummer.

I was getting excited for it until he said “5v5” then the excited went away.

The only chance this game has if its free to play. otherwise its Dead on arrival. theres nothing groundbreaking or interesting enough about this game compared to the 100 of other hero shooter games that are on the market already. its a saturated market enough as it is

I am SO so tired of the Marvel-esque witty quips stuff. Its proper brain dead nonsense, its an immediate deep sigh and a turn off.

I'm not that negative about it. Not saying I'm super excited for it or anything, but I'm looking forward to trying the beta if I get the chance.

Hero shooters like this live and die on their characters and the design for Concorde's reveal roster are generic, uninspired, derivative...you name it. Didn't find one character I could say "Hmmm I'd play like this or that character.

I actually found the "Savage Dragon+Yondu lookalike" character to be kind of annoying.

Too bad its a 5v5, I was thinking it would've worked better as a bounty hunter team PvE or PvP between between players hunting for the same bounty. Instead we got 'generic Guardians of Overwatch Legends'

Not my style of game, but the gameplay looked solid. Definitely was expecting far worse than what we saw. Always a roll of the dice if games like these take off or not. Probably why Sony is hedging their bet with a dozen other live service games in the pipeline.

This would have been fire as a competitor to Overwatch when that mattered. I believe the ship has sailed on a 5v5 shooter hit penetrating that market unless it is STELLAR gameplay. And from the looks of it, even THAT looks like a cheap imitation.

And let's not forget... they highlighted a competitor IN THE SAME SHOWCASE. If Concord is a purchased title and Marvel Rivals isn't... I'd bet on the Marvel IP being able to have longer legs than this will.

I was personally hoping this would be an extraction shooter, which is a genre sorely lacking on console. So while I may give this a spin, I can't see myself getting fully into at this stage. I'll need to try the beta and see for myself. But so far... YEESH.

You have to take things like this less seriously as half of the negative comments are from players who just like to hate on anything to do with Playstation and had no intention on playing the game anyway. And if you're not interested in online games then fair enough but there's absolutely no reason to write negative comments about the game, just move on.

@IamJT HUGE bummer and a slap in the face. Sony needs to get reconnected to their customer base because at this point, they're just traveling blindly.

More of the same. I wouldn’t mind just seeing the weekly CGI episodes on YouTube but I’m not wasting time on a repetitive arena shooter. Especially if it means I have to make 4 new friends as a 41 year old grumpy man.

@Gelloh It seriously makes me wonder just how bad Naughty Dog must have ***** up Factions 2 to get THAT cancelled, but then see stuff like this through to release. I have to imagine there was a LOT going on behind the scenes with that that we will never know.

@arsmolinarc That said, if I was a Sony shot-caller I would put all my liveservice eggs in the Helldivers 2 basket. Reinforce success instead of wasting valuable resources on duds.

@nessisonett Exactly. He brought that to his Avengers movies and it never left the MCU, then everything else started copying the style. It's so tired.

It's really simple Sony, nobody needs Yet Another 5vs5 Shooter. Why can't they just drop this nonsense and go back to making games I genuinely enjoyed and paid for?

@Czar_Khastik I have a game for you to play after Gollum and Kong, Czar. You can complete the Trilogy of Terrible by playing Quantum Error. Possibly the absolute worst game I’ve ever been suckered into for $20.

🤦🏽🤦🏽🤦🏽🤬🤬🖕🏽🖕🏽🖕🏽🤷🏽🙄☹️

"Girlboss leader who talks down to men because she's the smartest and most capable in the room at all times" was an interesting character trope 20 years ago. Now it's just so bland and over-used in media, just like everything else we've seen from this game up to this point. If you're doing something that's so heavily clichéd, there either needs to be a market for it (hello isekai anime) or it has to be exceptionally well done. It looks like it's going to be just another Counterstrike clone with stale humor and derivative characters. How exciting.

I hope marathon will be good. If it keeps bungies trademark shooting and gameplay but somehow the lore makes sense and people can follow it will be the service game to watch.

@IamJT bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. I respect journalists and get annoyed when articles like this one put a spotlight on Twitter posts etc, but then the neckbeards start screaming about how they wish they had a job in gam-I mean how TERIBBLE journalists are, and agendas, and how out of touch reviewers are, blah blah blah. Ahem. Then they go to a YouTube channel that basically just reads polygon articles and act like some influencer who is bought and sold with trips to Ubisoft HQ is the savior of artful criticism. No winning here.

@MFTWrecks I think that factions 2 just grew so big it turned into part 3 (hopefully).

I remember ND saying the new factions would have narrative elements right around the time they released concept art for it. Maybe ND thought all these ideas would work better in part 3.

And it wouldn't be "entitled" to think they OWE us a factions mode in the next game, right?

I mean, it was a part of the first game and it was pretty much promised for part 2 until they decided to make it into a live service game AFTER part 2 released.

@LikelySatan Yes you are correct. And articles like this farm engagement, which brings ad revenue, which keeps the site profitable etc. But there is room to add insightful commentary. Like the other article from today about PC gamers and PSN log ins. There are so many places you can take that article. What data does PSN collect? Why do they want it (study gamers activity/see what needs to change in the games/spot bugs and glitches/sell the data)? That would spark a conversation on the use media companies have for data and whether its proper/improper etc. It would be useful to the overall conversation. Instead that article just has a bunch of comments about how PC gamers are whiners.

@MFTWrecks from what it sounds like, it wasn't about gameplay, it was about monetization which is even more frustrating. Sony is the king of edging....

The game pulled me in with the cgi trailer then the gameplay started and I did the Undertaker with my eyes

@Gelloh Yea im sure the gameplay was like the game... and the original factions gameplay was awesome and the rougelite (or whatever you call it) in TLOU2 was awesome and well worth the $10 upgrade.

@IntrepidWombat the quipping got to me but I didn't notice the girlboss trope. She just seemed to have that cringe level of quirk I'm tired of.

@ZeD Same here...

I get why Sony et al are tempted by this kind of game. Hook people in for a long time and watch the money flow.

But by their very nature, only a few games like this succeed. There is a limited pool of gamers with limited time. A few games hook the majority of them, and the rest crash and burn with the investment wasted.

I guess the chance of hitting on a lottery ticket is worth it to them, but I don’t get it. Does not seem like a winning strategy long term.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner
Exactly. Social media is hastening our demise by letting stupid thought and ideas spread like wildfire while smart folk are more likely to be off social media in the first place.

If the better free, @get2sammyb, or do you have to buy the game to partake in the beta? Or is the game free full stop? Thanks...

In all honesty, this should have been a really cool single player story driven game first and foremost and then had a bolted on multiplayer like they showed which could have been worked on over time. Imagine if the first Gears of War had been nothing but the multiplayer. It actually was an afterthought that worked really really well, but I don’t think it would have done anywhere near as well if it was just a multiplayer experience . I just find it hard to support something which will end up being live service 5v5 and that’s it.. It’s a shame, because I actually liked the look of the fighting. Gave me Unreal Tournament vibes..

you have to buy concord and pay for ps+ to play it or marvel rivals which is free to play and dont need ps+

what will people choose free Marvel rivals or buy concord

The main female character Haymar is very pretty that's about the nicest thing I can say about this game

It looks fine. CG trailer was lovely, but like others have said I could care less at this point about 5v5 games. I’ve played SO much Overwatch and LoL I’m just burnt out for like I think. It is was an a story adventure about those 5? Sign me tf up.

It looks very generic and cringe, but the 5v5 killed it completely.

I actually thought it looked better than expected. I'm not even remotely interested in the story content they are talking about but the gameplay looked solid enough to where I'd like to try it once the beta comes around.

People reaction could be less negatives if the game also have SP campaign that they can enjoyed and finish for 6-8 hours to understand the world and characters before they go to multiplayer and shoot other people.

So it's just weird that Sony doesn't used that idea since their games like UC, TloU, Killzone, Socom, Resistance, or Ghost of Tsushima has excellent SP story campaign + solid MP mode. But for this game Sony just go straight to MP and think people gonna spend maybe 60-70 bucks for a brand new 5v5 game that looks like GotG x Overwatch had a baby.

I think it looks great.

The main problem I had with it was that it just didn't offer anything new. I'm sure it will play just fine and look just fine, but I felt like I've played similar games already a bunch of times and this one didn't do anything to stand out in an already crowded field. The one thing they have is the 'cinematic vignettes every week' – but I found the characters in the cinematic trailer to be fairly cliched and annoying and again didn't offer anything I hadn't seen before (a bunch of loveable misfits up to no good in space… where have I heard that one before?).

Kid: Can we get Concord
Me: We have Overwatch at home

It looks so bland and dated, it offers nothing new and it feels like it basing itself on trends that were already wearing thin in 2018.

Looked like a rip off guardians of the galaxy, continued to look like a rip off and when things were at their lowest, said it was 5v5 online rubbish. Not for me, I've tried them and since CoD United Offensive, they've all been a bit pants in my eyes. Could have been anything but online. squad shooter, single player and swap between characters and maybe. I just don't have the time or inclination to be battling online, but then I know a lot do.

@UltimateOtaku91 Your expecting to much from people lol.

@IamJT As an Overwatch almost-OG who still occasionally logs in, I can confirm I have zero interest in this game. I actually liked the CG cutscene and think the narrative stuff looks cool (though I doubt the average player would have the patience to sit through a cutscene every week).

But then we got to the gameplay. Which looked like Overwatch, but worse in every way. Less interesting movesets. Equatable gunplay. Generic visual style that makes things harder to distinguish. And 5v5 — why 5v5? They could've one upped Overwatch 2 with the 6v6 action everyone misses. But, instead, just do what Overwatch be doing. It's boring, frankly.

It's just a played out niche that's been done and even the most successful hero Shooter is waning in popularity.

Sony is once again late to a party that most gamers are over.

Not sure how many more bloated budget live service schemes have to fail in a 24 month period before the greed mongers realize that for the most part that ship has sailed. over monetization in general is growing less an less tolerated by enthusiast gamers, and the rest of the addictected zombies already have their hookup for this garbage.

Really Sony? Really. This has Suicide Squad level crash and burn written all over it and as far as I know Concord, even the name is an omen, doesn't even have a campaign that slightly redeemed SS.

I just don't understand how we're supposed to care about the characters when they are fighting pvp clones of themselves

I just wish it was something else other than a 5v5 shooter....

The devs are going to have to do a lot to make people interested in this.

Im actually looking forward to trying it out though it looked good, that being said man those are some boring looking characters and why on earth have the put pronouns on the character selection screen!? I want this to list their abilities/weapons not what they identify as!

That initial trailer was awesome. Thought it would be a space adventure made by a Sony team only to then see the 5v5 gameplay that looked like an Overwatch clone at best. Characters could be good but doesn't matter if the gameplay is just another run of the mill multiplayer shooter.

@Toot1st never mind just saw blackrock bought 104,271,037 sony shares that explains a lot

It about price price and price. £35 quid and it might pretty well. It will need a bit of love and attention from Sony over the next year. An a solid road map

Just playing catch-up with the State of Play — arena shooters are really not the genre of game I go for personally, but I imagine for those that do, it'll do a decent job, so why all the hate?

@nessisonett yeah, the snarky Joss Whedon "well THAT just happened" style of writing/delivery got really stale post the first Avengers film

As someone who loves Splatoon, a great 4v4 shooter, I don't get what is supposed to be appealing about this game. They try to set up the characters like they're story based, in a game where they just run in a circular arena and shoot each other over and over again. The story has no basis in the gameplay, like they hired an outside company to make a prequel movie, but then bake it into the game as an add-on.

@KundaliniRising333 The business problem is 1 successful service amidst a pile of 20 failed services is still 800% more profit over 20 somewhat successful normal games. That's why they keep doing it.

Imagine having a choice of buying a lottery ticket every day and winning $50 every day, or buying a lottery ticket every day and having a 1 in 5000 chance of winning 8 billion. That's why these companies will never give it up. The reward of riches is successful is worth gambling the whole company to the investors putting the money up for lottery tickets.

I didn't care for the story or characters but the gameplay actually looked good.

@DETfaninATL Oh yes, I missed that one! Thanks mate, I'll spread the word about that hidden gemturd

This game is 10 years too late lol

Are Overwatch clones still a thing? Why? I was hoping for some borderlands/destiny type game not this crap. At this point it will take a lot to get me to play or even try it, I would have to think about it even if its free.

My guess is this game will do well, it's just not aimed at the typical Playstation gamer. Clearly, this is targeting the Overwatch crowd.

One of the worst Sony showcases so not really shocked by this news.

@Gamer_X It wasn't a showcase.

This game should be able to draw in overwatch and destiny crucible people.

I hope I won’t be an outlier as somebody who actually liked what he saw.
I will definitely give the game a go.

This one seems to be following on the footsteps of Suicide Squad...

@theSpectre: Do you know what the word showcase has in common with the words:
Presentation, display, exhibit, exposition, broadcast?

They are all the synonymous and mean exactly the same no matter how badly you want to dress it down by the State of Play poor reception.

What annoys me about Concord, and Fairgames too for that matter, is that every shooter nowadays seems to go for this colourful/cartoons aesthetic, accompanied with 'funny' characters with a lot of Marvel/Disney inspired 'quirky' Gen-Z dialogue. Surely there are people who like that, but I'm not one of them.

Where are the gritty, grounded, realistic experiences? Is there really no audience for that anymore?

@ZeD I’m sorry, but have you been living under a rock? They’ve been saying it’s a multiplayer shooter since since the project was not even announced

@grimgaming "Where are the gritty, grounded, realistic experiences? Is there really no audience for that anymore?"

You can play Escape From Tarkov, R6 Siege, Six Days in Fallujah, Ready or Not, Hunt Showdown, or Arma 3 if that's what you want.

But it's just funny because people complaint back in PS3/360 era when the shooters market was flooded with the same gritty, grey, grounded, and realistic vibes. Then devs jumping to the colorful and cartoony shooters and people also complaint about it lol.

@PuppetMaster Some people are just miserable and live to complain. They are always on the socials crying, cause they are terminally online. I suspect most of them don't even play games, you don't see me writing a hate comment cause I saw Princess Peach on a Nintendo Direct.

@doughnutsfan actually… yes 😂
I’ve not been fully following any gaming news for quite a while and this was the first bit of media I paid 100% attention to. I’m slowly catching up. (Like I found out a few days ago there is a new Star Wars and Assassin Creed game coming out this year!)
Up until that SoP, I had no idea Concord existed let alone what sort of game it was 😂

...but Helldivers is bughunt fun that can be played singleplayer. This Concord is just 1000000th copy of Unreal Tournament...

"fastest-selling PS Studios title" lol since when Arrowhead is a "playstation studio"? giving credit to the "playstation studios" for a game they didn't make, instead you should have said "fastest selling 3rd party owned IP", and this game concord looks so soulless and lame it'll be dead on arrival, devs actually sat down for 5 years to make a clone non original lame game no one asked for lol how can someone see this for 5 years and think it's a good idea LOL

@PuppetMaster I know I can play those games. But most of them are mediocre - that's why I want those games from Sony, because Sony has a high quality standard.

Your second point would have been valid if it was me complaining about gritty experiences at that time. But I wasn't, I liked those games.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Amen, brother.

@Czar_Khastik Fair play, we've had some absolute bangers lately! This looks like it'll be joining that top class line up! Though imagine if those Devs all banded together to work on one mega project...it's good to dream sometimes 😂.

@grimgaming I'm sorry if i wasn't clear but I'm not talking about you specifically in the second point. I just remembered how a lot of people reacted to gritty / realistic shooter back in PS3/360 era or at the end of that era where people got sick of it and asked devs for cartoony / brightful shooter. That's why we got shooters like Apex, Overwatch, Valorant, etc.

But are you sure you already played all those shooter that i mention? I mean, Ready or Not got 'very positive' reviews on Steam. R6 Siege also got 'very positive' reviews on Steam and PS4/5. And as far as i remember, people also enjoyed Arma 3, Hunt Showdown, and Six Days in Fallujah. I didn't see many people who said those shooters are mediocre.

Sony gritty shooters already dead though like Killzone, Resistance, SOCOM, or MAG. So don't expect a new gritty shooters from them for a long time...

Live Service. urghh.... why???
Just no interest from me ever.

I am way more excited for that Marvel hero shooter than I am for this. And I think that says a lot

@PuppetMaster I think you replied to the wrong person, I assume you are replying to me.

Yeah I understand that you weren’t talking about me specifically I was just trying to make the point that people complaining about shooters being too gritty/realistic is not the entire gaming community and that there are (quite a lot of) people who enjoyed that too.

Personally, I am of the opinion that most of the people who choose PS a as a platform have done so because they like more ‘mature’ (and often realistic) experiences like TLOU, Uncharted, GOW, GoT, DS etc. I am one of those people, and I really expected that when PlayStation made the push into live service it would be a smaller step for their playerbase to have live service games fall into that segment as well. That’s why I think Factions not releasing is such a gigantic miss. Simultaneously, I very much understand that Overwatch, Fortnite etc are absolute cash cows and Sony wants some of that money too. But I would have preferred a little more balance I guess, and looking at the like/dislike ratio on YouTube for Concord/Fairgames I think many people have the same feeling. Sony needs to make sure they don’t alienate their original fanbase with this live service effort.

Those dead franchises you mention are exactly the ones I’d have liked to see revived but yeah maybe the demand is not there.

This has to be a guardian of the galaxy game before it's been repurposed as this new ip, the characters are a straight copy of that movie! It's like they only change the characters colours, add some yellow there, red here, etc.

Maybe it's a failed marvel collaboration between sony and disney, then sony backing down because marvel movies aren't selling anymore and repurposed this as a new ip.

@nessisonett first thing i thought of at the reveal was guardians of the galaxy, so i would throw james gunn into the list of influences as well. been there, done that. this game is wearing its influences on its sleeve.

@wiiware agreed.the guardians influence cannot be ignored with this one

There are quite a few comments along the lines of "It was looking like it had potential, and then...."

I also feel this. There wasn't much that piqued my interest in the state of play, but this one felt like a slap in the face "here, it actually could be really cool, well presented, characters that could be interesting... Oh, and it's 5v5". Bugger that for a game of soldiers. I'm willing to look outside my wheelhouse any day, but not THAT far...

I think it looked quite nice im a little disappointed that its a 5 V 5 im certain this would be a better game with optional coop and a story but ugly no and the story looked nice.

@grimgaming Oh s* sorry man i got brainfart. Yeah that reply was for you.

I love TloU Faction and yeah sad that Faction 2 got cancelled since Part 2 gameplay is awesome. Imagine you can bait the clickers to your opponent group or you can used dogs to attack your opponent. Not sure why they cancelled it though. Feels like they have better chance with Faction 2 compare to Concord because it's not 5v5 hero shooter.

And yeah gritty / realistic shooter still has their own market. Outside low demand, Sony probably too scared to revive Killzone, Resistance, or Socom because they will compete with COD, Battlefield, or R6 who has bigger brand.

People are just sick & tired of generic online shooters, period. That’s how simple it is!

@Gamer_X Wow, I stand corrected. I'm so sorry. I didn't realize until you slowly laid it out and shoved it down my throat. Of course, my mistake master. Please forgive me, master. I submit myself for discipline oh chief of the grammar police. God have mercy on my soul.