I'm sorry, but, maybe Horizon just isn't 'a thing'. Sony, or maybe Hermen specifically, think they can make it 'a thing'. But it just ain't.
This is not a Star Wars or Marvel-level franchise. It never will be. It's two pretty but otherwise unremarkable open world games and now a sub-standard LEGO spin-off. I'm surprised it didn't debut lower on Steam. Sony's own Star Wars, Concord, launched at 698 players.
Not that I want to rain on anyone's parade, but these horrible YouTooz and Funko Pop vinyl figures, that take any popular IP they can find and mutilate and molest the characters to fit their products, are just ghastly.
Funko is horrible with those beady-eyes, and half the time you can't even recognize what character they're supposed to be - especially with humans, as the faces are all generic and the bodies comparatively tiny. YouTooz just feels to me like a late arrival to the party who are not subtle at all in ripping off Funko's shtick with differently-styled eyes.
I loved Ghostwire on PS Plus Extra, so while I have already played and Platinumed and 100%ed it, I am pleased to now add it to my library on a slightly more permanent basis. It's an acquired taste, but if it does fit your palate, it's a blast to play through.
However, the Platinum is a humongous grind and the 100% introduces a fair bit of difficulty plus RNG collectibles in its roguelite mode. Looking forward to seeing the average and Platinum rarity drop a few notches.
I still have NHL 2K10, that's good enough. Even then, you can get something like NHL 20 or 21 for less than the price of a cup of coffee if you want something more modern. No reason to ever buy these games brand new and let EA get away with the painfully minor updates each year.
Unless you're a HUT or MUT or FUT fan, in which case I'm just glad you didn't get addicted to something worse.
Ubisoft; 'after 8 years and numerous delays, we have finally released a bare bones pirate ship simulator with dreadful monetization'
RGG Studio; '***** it, we ball - side-game we threw together quickly, including naval combat plus everything else found in a Yakuza/LAD game now comes out a week early'
I got a PS5 months after release, and guess what? I've been able to enjoy an endless deluge of last-gen games at cut-rate prices. Pennies on the Pound stuff. Disc drive. Used copy. PSN sale. No problems whatsoever.
And then the new PS Plus tiers came, and I bought a few years of PS Now to convert into Premium cheaply. Now I genuinely don't remember the last game I bought new on day 1. Yakuza Like a Dragon, I think? Purely to support RGG studio.
All this to say, don't be a mug. Let others pay the premium and beta test the bugs for you, and ride their coat tails for cheap a few months or years later. You don't seriously think games like Star Wars Outlaws are worth playing on release, right?
I know four of these names, and for the rest I have just no clue. If you told me they came from whatever IMDB's adult-only equivalent is, I'd believe you.
They're insane if they bring it back now. Do you really want to take the 99.9% risk that this flops AGAIN? Your tentpole first party title, flopping twice, that's what you want?
You should watch the cutscenes, she goes on an anti-v4xx rant in her 'ending'. Throws around words like 'bodily autonomy', 'colonizer', 'wealth redistribution'. I can't believe hundreds of devs had a hand in this, and no one said 'you know, this actually isn't the epic slay we think it is'. Or they did, and got shut down by senior / third party agents.
I'm really sorry, but this looks really poor. Deviating way, way too far from the source material from the looks of it. Easy pass for me, despite being a hardcore, obsessive fans since 2010.
I'm all for fighting for your right to your own patents, but surely this money would be much better spent on making an actual next-gen Pokemon game, rather than the woefully buggy low-tech slop Game Freak has served with Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet.
There is a timeline out there where Nintendo managed to wrestle control of the franchise away from Game Freak and Creatures Inc, and had actually competent studios do the mainline games and achieve world peace.
Right guys, who will chip into my GoFundMe to buy the Killzone license? I'll call the project 'True Killzone 3' and it opens with you shooting Rico before he shoots Visari.
I know I'll likely be the only one saying this, but I absolutely loathe the tone and especially the artstyle of this game. Can't quite find the words for it, but it's incredibly off-putting from the use of colours to the 'whimsical' characters to just the general vibe. I also don't understand why the lines on every character and object seem to be broken up. The art lead putting an ill-informed signature gimmick on everything, perhaps?
Other day 1 PS Plus Extra games like Tchia and Stray had a lot going for it. Lesser known gems like Jett: The Far Shore were well worth experiencing. But this one seems to offer absolutely nothing at all. A shame for all involved.
Was it really that hard/expensive to get the old voice actor back? Really, guys? What a shame. Glad I found a physical copy of the original for PS4 in Hong Kong, just 6 quid too - what a steal.
I enjoyed 2042 via PS Plus. Perfectly fine bog-standard shooter, better than Battlefield V. Future settings are much more interesting than the present when executed well, but DICE really didn't manage to spin a good yarn in 2042.
@Yagami I'm sure that the official social media accounts for the series / RGG Studios spamming OG Yakuza 3 screenshots right now is purely to rub salt in the wounds, and definitely not a hint at what's to come in a few days.
I grew up when the Powerpuff show was first airing and in the targeted age range at that, and frankly, I never understood why it was so popular - let alone why the IP seems to endure to this day.
Reminder that Firewalk's Lead Character Designer had never previously held any kind of character design-related role, only gameplay design and QA. Doomed from the get-go.
Will this let players get the Plat entirely offline? If so, I might pick this up many years down the line at my own leisure (or once it comes to Plus Extra)
But if even the game's creative director thinks these section were a mistake, why did you ship the game with them included? Especially when they are apparently mostly in the early parts of the game, e.g. exactly the part where you don't want to frustrate people into dropping the game. Are these people for real?
EDIT; "But if Massive Entertainment can polish the experience over the coming weeks and months, we could see something of a turnaround."
This stupid game launched nearly two weeks ago, why are we talking about polish in the coming weeks and months? What happened to shipping a polished game on day 1? I know this is Ubisoft and thus the bar is very, very low, but this goes to show how clownish the industry is currently. Can people please stop buying this kinda slop so Ubi and friends can finally learn their lesson?
Bless these hunters, such a feat to pull off. Also a very small community, I'm pretty sure I boosted one of the PS3 Assassin's Creed games with Sultan.
Sony/Firewalk could have put in the smallest possible amount of effort to simply boost XP by, say, a factor of one thousand, as a gesture of goodwill. But nope. Shutdown notice three days ahead of time. Nice one.
Also to note that this was mishandled by Sony from start to finish.
This game couldn't possibly have looked good enough to acquire so late into development, let alone the studio that made it. No one, at least not at the very top, seems to be able to read a room, because a hero shooter with a pricetag like this, in a saturated market where pretty much all the established competitors are F2P (including the upcoming Marvel Legends that leverages an established IP). Even when they finished the acquisition in 2022 or 2023, it was obvious that Firewalk were six years late chasing a trend that had since deflated.
Sony rubber-stamped the character designs, the knock-off Temu-ass Guardians of the Galaxy vibe. They signed off on investing concordillions of Dollars in the poorly-conceived idea that a hero shooter should drip-feed its story through weekly cutscenes and a humongous lore dump in an optional menu. They also figured it worth investing even more money in a Secret Level episode - essentially product placement - plus those horrible animated shorts they put out on YouTube.
Sony looked at the studio, could have noted that the lead character designer had only ever held gameplay design and QA roles, could have seen that the lead narrative designer (eventual 'Head of IP') had never worked on a video game before. They still bought this team, and let them fumble around. To let a guy with zero experience design the HEROES for your HERO shooter and letting someone unfamiliar with video game development design lead the narrative on such a tricky proposition is mind-boggling. It's like letting a stoker steer the Titanic, since he's proven so good at shovelling coal previously.
They must have seen the overwhelmingly negative reception to the trailer. The low pre-order numbers. The dismal numbers for the first beta, which was quickly thrown open to everyone (this was such a red flag for me).
Instead of delaying the game and baking it properly (change to F2P to stand a chance) or quietly canning it, they still went ahead with the launch, knowing the public Steam playercount would make them a laughing stock.
The game launched exactly as everyone predicted, and instead of giving the 27 or so people who liked it a proper amount of time to say goodbye, they just nuked the entire game outright. Three days of advance warning, nothing more. Offering universal refunds was the only call they got right. But those three days were obviously not enough for the people who did want to play or the hardcore fans that hunt Trophies and now had a race against the clock on their hands. Trophy hunters might be a tiny minority, but they are your whales - they will buy way more than just COD + FIFA/Madden every year.
And now the game will be memory-holed for good - there is no way they will waste more money on it, F2P won't save it, and they can't afford to have it flop twice. Heads must roll for this, and I'm sure they will. But we can only cross our fingers that it will be the right heads, rather than scapegoats.
The argument made is that Playstation reinvents itself, shedding/leaving IP behind in the process.
I'm willing to argue that, rather, Playstation has largely failed to reinvent its IP. God of War and Ratchet are the only currently-relevant PS icons remaining from the PS2 era. Plus maybe Toro in Japan.
Nintendo can keep something like Kirby going, but Ape Escape is dead and buried? Halo survived a change of developer and some hiccups, but Killzone's amazing universe couldn't survive the tepid Shadow Fall? Meanwhile, eight years and tens of millions of Dollars so Concord could be playable for eight days. WipEout is dead but we sure all loved Destruction All Stars. Resistance is gone but hey, the floundering Destiny universe is first-party now! A new take on MAG or SOCOM would wipe the floor with Fairgame$, if it hasn't been quietly shelved already.
Reinvention is only good if the new reality is worthwhile / better than the past. Sony cooked the entire PS5 generation by not turning on the stove. I want the best for the company and for us enthusiasts, and for all our sakes, they need to take a long hard look at themselves.
I assume you can still boot the game from a physical copy after shutdown? Sure, no matches or anything, but you could still theoretically do the time trials and read the cringe lore dumps?
Incredible, we're watching gaming history as it happens. E.T. ain't nothing compared to this one.
Game no one asked for, in a genre everyone is sick of, with characters no one likes. It was always going to fail, but this badly? I'm at a loss for words.
Even the numbers reached during the free, open beta would be considered a catastrophic failure - you can't keep running a AAA live service by a studio of 100+ developers on a CCU of 2500. Not even an anime bunny girl skin cash shop could harpoon enough whales from such a tiny playerbase to have the game remain financially viable.
Concord was a dead man walking upon release, and with 66 players as of right now - less than a week from release - it's over. It should never have been conceived, the studio should never have been acquired by Sony, and post-acquisition the game should have been sh*tcanned immediately.
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.
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.
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?
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'.
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.
Single player games (and Factions II) die before release so that Concord could.... die upon release. Jim Ryan's circle of life, it's like pottery, it rhymes.
Comments 492
Re: Hot on the Heels of LEGO Horizon Adventures PS5, Official LEGO Horizon Set Leaks
I'm sorry, but, maybe Horizon just isn't 'a thing'. Sony, or maybe Hermen specifically, think they can make it 'a thing'. But it just ain't.
This is not a Star Wars or Marvel-level franchise. It never will be. It's two pretty but otherwise unremarkable open world games and now a sub-standard LEGO spin-off. I'm surprised it didn't debut lower on Steam. Sony's own Star Wars, Concord, launched at 698 players.
Re: Youtooz Teases More Plastic PlayStation Tat for Your Nerd Room
Not that I want to rain on anyone's parade, but these horrible YouTooz and Funko Pop vinyl figures, that take any popular IP they can find and mutilate and molest the characters to fit their products, are just ghastly.
Funko is horrible with those beady-eyes, and half the time you can't even recognize what character they're supposed to be - especially with humans, as the faces are all generic and the bodies comparatively tiny. YouTooz just feels to me like a late arrival to the party who are not subtle at all in ripping off Funko's shtick with differently-styled eyes.
Re: PS Plus Essential Provides 3 PS5, PS4 Games to Download Now
Please give Ghostwire: Tokyo a try. It's not a perfect game, but its sandbox is absolutely beautiful and full of atmosphere.
Re: PS Plus Essential Games for November 2024 Announced
I loved Ghostwire on PS Plus Extra, so while I have already played and Platinumed and 100%ed it, I am pleased to now add it to my library on a slightly more permanent basis. It's an acquired taste, but if it does fit your palate, it's a blast to play through.
However, the Platinum is a humongous grind and the 100% introduces a fair bit of difficulty plus RNG collectibles in its roguelite mode. Looking forward to seeing the average and Platinum rarity drop a few notches.
Re: Random: Boxing Champ Cosplays as Hitman's Agent 47 for Fury Presser
BBC News ran a piece on this, with the presenter saying he 'dressed up as the video game character Hitman'.
I had to stop myself from going on a rant and scaring everyone around me.
Re: NHL 25 (PS5) - Another Season Mired in Mediocrity
I still have NHL 2K10, that's good enough. Even then, you can get something like NHL 20 or 21 for less than the price of a cup of coffee if you want something more modern. No reason to ever buy these games brand new and let EA get away with the painfully minor updates each year.
Unless you're a HUT or MUT or FUT fan, in which case I'm just glad you didn't get addicted to something worse.
Re: Like a Dragon's PS5 Date Change Will Let You Play Monster Hunter Wilds with Peace of Mind, Director Says
Ubisoft; 'after 8 years and numerous delays, we have finally released a bare bones pirate ship simulator with dreadful monetization'
RGG Studio; '***** it, we ball - side-game we threw together quickly, including naval combat plus everything else found in a Yakuza/LAD game now comes out a week early'
Can these guys get any more goated holy ****
Re: Opinion: The Price of Playing PS5 Games Day One Is Getting Higher and Higher
I skipped out on the PS4.
I got a PS5 months after release, and guess what? I've been able to enjoy an endless deluge of last-gen games at cut-rate prices. Pennies on the Pound stuff. Disc drive. Used copy. PSN sale. No problems whatsoever.
And then the new PS Plus tiers came, and I bought a few years of PS Now to convert into Premium cheaply. Now I genuinely don't remember the last game I bought new on day 1. Yakuza Like a Dragon, I think? Purely to support RGG studio.
All this to say, don't be a mug. Let others pay the premium and beta test the bugs for you, and ride their coat tails for cheap a few months or years later. You don't seriously think games like Star Wars Outlaws are worth playing on release, right?
Re: Leaked Secret Level Trailer Reveals Anthology Series' Star-Studded Cast
I know four of these names, and for the rest I have just no clue. If you told me they came from whatever IMDB's adult-only equivalent is, I'd believe you.
Re: Concord Devs Tinker with PC Files, Spurring Free-to-Play Speculation
They're insane if they bring it back now. Do you really want to take the 99.9% risk that this flops AGAIN? Your tentpole first party title, flopping twice, that's what you want?
It's like re-releasing Morbius an-.... oh.
Re: Romantic Slice of Life SINce Memories Makes a Move on PS4 This Month
Very slay. This is the kind of genre diversity we need.
Re: Big Star Wars Outlaws PS5 Update Takes Aim at Stealth, Performance
@tselliot That sounds interesting, what was the quote exactly? Sounds like the French equivalent of Concord's 'Talentless freaks' moment.
Re: Crickets as Suicide Squad Endures Another Muted Launch
You should watch the cutscenes, she goes on an anti-v4xx rant in her 'ending'. Throws around words like 'bodily autonomy', 'colonizer', 'wealth redistribution'. I can't believe hundreds of devs had a hand in this, and no one said 'you know, this actually isn't the epic slay we think it is'. Or they did, and got shut down by senior / third party agents.
Re: Dragon of Dojima Roars in Official Like a Dragon: Yakuza Trailer
I'm really sorry, but this looks really poor. Deviating way, way too far from the source material from the looks of it. Easy pass for me, despite being a hardcore, obsessive fans since 2010.
Re: Palworld Struck by Nintendo Lawsuit Days Prior to Predicted PS5 Reveal
I'm all for fighting for your right to your own patents, but surely this money would be much better spent on making an actual next-gen Pokemon game, rather than the woefully buggy low-tech slop Game Freak has served with Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet.
There is a timeline out there where Nintendo managed to wrestle control of the franchise away from Game Freak and Creatures Inc, and had actually competent studios do the mainline games and achieve world peace.
Re: In an Unprecedented Twist, Sony Is Licensing Freedom Wars to Bandai Namco
Right guys, who will chip into my GoFundMe to buy the Killzone license? I'll call the project 'True Killzone 3' and it opens with you shooting Rico before he shoots Visari.
Re: The Plucky Squire (PS5) - Joyful, Inventive Adventure on Every Page of PS Plus Gem
I know I'll likely be the only one saying this, but I absolutely loathe the tone and especially the artstyle of this game. Can't quite find the words for it, but it's incredibly off-putting from the use of colours to the 'whimsical' characters to just the general vibe. I also don't understand why the lines on every character and object seem to be broken up. The art lead putting an ill-informed signature gimmick on everything, perhaps?
Other day 1 PS Plus Extra games like Tchia and Stray had a lot going for it. Lesser known gems like Jett: The Far Shore were well worth experiencing. But this one seems to offer absolutely nothing at all. A shame for all involved.
Re: Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster (PS5) - Capcom Classic Still Shines 18 Years Later
Was it really that hard/expensive to get the old voice actor back? Really, guys? What a shame. Glad I found a physical copy of the original for PS4 in Hong Kong, just 6 quid too - what a steal.
Re: Vince Zampella Confirms Battlefield Will Return to Modern Setting
I enjoyed 2042 via PS Plus. Perfectly fine bog-standard shooter, better than Battlefield V. Future settings are much more interesting than the present when executed well, but DICE really didn't manage to spin a good yarn in 2042.
Re: State of Play Rumoured for This Month As Sony Looks Set to Skip PS Showcase in 2024
@Yagami I'm sure that the official social media accounts for the series / RGG Studios spamming OG Yakuza 3 screenshots right now is purely to rub salt in the wounds, and definitely not a hint at what's to come in a few days.
Re: State of Play Rumoured for This Month As Sony Looks Set to Skip PS Showcase in 2024
Good thing Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is swooping in to save September with their summit on the 20th. Kiwami 3 GOTY 2025 baybee!
Re: Powerpuff Girls Finally Confirmed for MultiVersus When Season 3 Begins on PS5, PS4
I grew up when the Powerpuff show was first airing and in the targeted age range at that, and frankly, I never understood why it was so popular - let alone why the IP seems to endure to this day.
Re: The Borderlands Movie Barely Made Back Its Marketing Budget
Randy Twitter meltdown in 3... 2... 1...
Re: Freelance Artist Attempts to Redesign PS5, PC Flop Concord's Cast
Reminder that Firewalk's Lead Character Designer had never previously held any kind of character design-related role, only gameplay design and QA. Doomed from the get-go.
Re: The Crew 2 and Motorfest to Receive Offline Modes in Future Updates on PS5, PS4
Will this let players get the Plat entirely offline? If so, I might pick this up many years down the line at my own leisure (or once it comes to Plus Extra)
Re: Star Wars Outlaws' Instant Fail Stealth Sections Will Be Reworked in Upcoming PS5 Patch
But if even the game's creative director thinks these section were a mistake, why did you ship the game with them included? Especially when they are apparently mostly in the early parts of the game, e.g. exactly the part where you don't want to frustrate people into dropping the game. Are these people for real?
EDIT; "But if Massive Entertainment can polish the experience over the coming weeks and months, we could see something of a turnaround."
This stupid game launched nearly two weeks ago, why are we talking about polish in the coming weeks and months? What happened to shipping a polished game on day 1? I know this is Ubisoft and thus the bar is very, very low, but this goes to show how clownish the industry is currently. Can people please stop buying this kinda slop so Ubi and friends can finally learn their lesson?
Re: Soapbox: I Spent 3 Days with the Concord Trophy Hunters Who Dedicated Their Lives to Unlocking the PS5, PC Platinum
Bless these hunters, such a feat to pull off. Also a very small community, I'm pretty sure I boosted one of the PS3 Assassin's Creed games with Sultan.
Sony/Firewalk could have put in the smallest possible amount of effort to simply boost XP by, say, a factor of one thousand, as a gesture of goodwill. But nope. Shutdown notice three days ahead of time. Nice one.
Re: PS5, PC Disaster Concord Is Now Officially Offline Indefinitely
Also to note that this was mishandled by Sony from start to finish.
This game couldn't possibly have looked good enough to acquire so late into development, let alone the studio that made it. No one, at least not at the very top, seems to be able to read a room, because a hero shooter with a pricetag like this, in a saturated market where pretty much all the established competitors are F2P (including the upcoming Marvel Legends that leverages an established IP). Even when they finished the acquisition in 2022 or 2023, it was obvious that Firewalk were six years late chasing a trend that had since deflated.
Sony rubber-stamped the character designs, the knock-off Temu-ass Guardians of the Galaxy vibe. They signed off on investing concordillions of Dollars in the poorly-conceived idea that a hero shooter should drip-feed its story through weekly cutscenes and a humongous lore dump in an optional menu. They also figured it worth investing even more money in a Secret Level episode - essentially product placement - plus those horrible animated shorts they put out on YouTube.
Sony looked at the studio, could have noted that the lead character designer had only ever held gameplay design and QA roles, could have seen that the lead narrative designer (eventual 'Head of IP') had never worked on a video game before. They still bought this team, and let them fumble around. To let a guy with zero experience design the HEROES for your HERO shooter and letting someone unfamiliar with video game development design lead the narrative on such a tricky proposition is mind-boggling. It's like letting a stoker steer the Titanic, since he's proven so good at shovelling coal previously.
They must have seen the overwhelmingly negative reception to the trailer. The low pre-order numbers. The dismal numbers for the first beta, which was quickly thrown open to everyone (this was such a red flag for me).
Instead of delaying the game and baking it properly (change to F2P to stand a chance) or quietly canning it, they still went ahead with the launch, knowing the public Steam playercount would make them a laughing stock.
The game launched exactly as everyone predicted, and instead of giving the 27 or so people who liked it a proper amount of time to say goodbye, they just nuked the entire game outright. Three days of advance warning, nothing more. Offering universal refunds was the only call they got right. But those three days were obviously not enough for the people who did want to play or the hardcore fans that hunt Trophies and now had a race against the clock on their hands. Trophy hunters might be a tiny minority, but they are your whales - they will buy way more than just COD + FIFA/Madden every year.
And now the game will be memory-holed for good - there is no way they will waste more money on it, F2P won't save it, and they can't afford to have it flop twice. Heads must roll for this, and I'm sure they will. But we can only cross our fingers that it will be the right heads, rather than scapegoats.
Re: PS5, PC Disaster Concord Is Now Officially Offline Indefinitely
Concord has fallen. Concordillions must refund.
Re: Concord Will Remain in Prime Video's Secret Level Anthology Series
'Comedy' was never listed as one of Concord's genres, but then here we are.
Re: Surging Space Marine 2 Early Access Numbers Portend a Golden Future
Idk guys, that's only 56 times as many players as Concord's beta managed at its peak 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Re: Soapbox: Astro Bot PS5 Is Not a Graveyard, It's a Joyful Demonstration of Sony's Unique Ability to Reinvent Itself
The argument made is that Playstation reinvents itself, shedding/leaving IP behind in the process.
I'm willing to argue that, rather, Playstation has largely failed to reinvent its IP. God of War and Ratchet are the only currently-relevant PS icons remaining from the PS2 era. Plus maybe Toro in Japan.
Nintendo can keep something like Kirby going, but Ape Escape is dead and buried? Halo survived a change of developer and some hiccups, but Killzone's amazing universe couldn't survive the tepid Shadow Fall? Meanwhile, eight years and tens of millions of Dollars so Concord could be playable for eight days. WipEout is dead but we sure all loved Destruction All Stars. Resistance is gone but hey, the floundering Destiny universe is first-party now! A new take on MAG or SOCOM would wipe the floor with Fairgame$, if it hasn't been quietly shelved already.
Reinvention is only good if the new reality is worthwhile / better than the past. Sony cooked the entire PS5 generation by not turning on the stove. I want the best for the company and for us enthusiasts, and for all our sakes, they need to take a long hard look at themselves.
Re: Concord PS5, PC Scalpers Attempt to Cash In on 'Rare Collector's Item'
I assume you can still boot the game from a physical copy after shutdown? Sure, no matches or anything, but you could still theoretically do the time trials and read the cringe lore dumps?
Re: Star Wars Outlaws Director a 'Little Disappointed' with Critical Reception
Mid game, mid score. If that's difficult for him to comprehend, I can understand why the game turned out the way it did.
Re: Internal Sony Fairgame$ Chatter Is Reportedly Quite Positive
Can't wait for this one. Will it last at least three weeks?
Re: Players Take the Easy Way Out in Pursuit of Concord's Coveted Platinum Trophy
I respect the hustle, Godspeed you crazy rascals.
The Plat seemed like an easy but long grind. Little did anyone know, it came with a two-week deadline.
Re: Random: Gearbox Founder, CEO Compares Company to The Beatles, Gets Roasted
I assume the original Borderlands was only good by accident, considering who's helming the company.
Re: PS5, PC Shooter Concord Dead on Arrival, Is Being Taken Offline This Week as Dev 'Explores Options'
Incredible, we're watching gaming history as it happens. E.T. ain't nothing compared to this one.
Game no one asked for, in a genre everyone is sick of, with characters no one likes. It was always going to fail, but this badly? I'm at a loss for words.
Re: Rumour: Blizzard's Making a 'AAA RPG-FPS', Possibly an Overwatch Spin-Off
Only needs 698 concurrent players at launch to beat Concord, think they'll manage that?
Re: How Long Does It Take to Find a Match in Concord on PS5, PC?
Eight years to develop, eight minutes to matchmake, on the eighth day of release.
It's like poetry, it rhymes.
Re: Players Complain of Lengthy PS5 Matchmaking Times As Concord Numbers Dwindle
Even the numbers reached during the free, open beta would be considered a catastrophic failure - you can't keep running a AAA live service by a studio of 100+ developers on a CCU of 2500. Not even an anime bunny girl skin cash shop could harpoon enough whales from such a tiny playerbase to have the game remain financially viable.
Concord was a dead man walking upon release, and with 66 players as of right now - less than a week from release - it's over. It should never have been conceived, the studio should never have been acquired by Sony, and post-acquisition the game should have been sh*tcanned immediately.
Re: Talking Point: Can PS5, PC Shooter Concord Be Saved?
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.
Re: RGG Summit 2024 Will Give Us the Latest from the Like a Dragon Team in September
3 KIWAMI
DEAD SOULS KIWAMI
FOUND JUDGMENT
AKIYAMA SPIN-OFF
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT THAT SHINADA EXISTS?
RGG are the only studio that just don't miss
Re: PS1 Hagrid Will Be a Cosmetic in Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions on PS5, PS4
Have to appreciate this, the devs not taking themselves too seriously.
Re: Talking Point: Can PS5, PC Shooter Concord Be Saved?
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.
Re: Talking Point: Can PS5, PC Shooter Concord Be Saved?
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?
Re: Talking Point: Can PS5, PC Shooter Concord Be Saved?
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'.
Re: Talking Point: Can PS5, PC Shooter Concord Be Saved?
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.
Re: Spare a Thought for Secret Level's Concord Episode
@PsBoxSwitchOwner paying for Concord is indeed not something many have done
Re: Crash Bandicoot 5 Reportedly Cut in Favour of More Live Service Games
Single player games (and Factions II) die before release so that Concord could.... die upon release. Jim Ryan's circle of life, it's like pottery, it rhymes.