PloverNutter

@__jamiie This is just completely wrong. The reason there are graphics vs performance modes now isn't because devs are "lazy". The truth is that it is the opposite. The PS3/360 era may be the first HD era of gaming but the details on the models themselves were still very much as simple as they were in the PS2/Xbox era. Now devs are individually designing every strand of hair on characters' heads that have realistic physics instead of just doing a singular LEGO style hair piece. The ground and walls are modeled to have actual texture instead of simply having 2D texture images slapped onto them. Same with the clothes characters wear. Devs are choosing to utilize the increased processing power to put an absurd amount of detail into their games and that is why every game can't be 4K 60fps unless it is highly stylized such as Borderlands 3.

Also do you think every game in the PS3/360 era ran at 1080P 60fps? That most certainly wasn't the case. That was a rarity. If a game was advertised as 1080P it most definitely ran at 30fps and if it ran at 60fps it had a 720P resolution. This has always been a thing with gaming. At least now games are giving players the option to pick what they want prioritized instead of going "just deal with whatever we choose for you"

@Weebleman Bend admitted a couple years back that they pitched a sequel and Sony said no

@SMcCrae95 this guy sucks but Days Gone is a really good game, even great if playing on a PS5 so it’s does 4k at 60fps. The first hour is rough but after that the game really shines. The problem was that they released it as a buggy mess and it should have been delayed. Maybe even just had made it a PS5 launch title as the hardware makes it run better than a lot of games released even today.

@TheMysticOne this is never going to happen. The game failed and isn’t coming back. Plain and simple

I really wouldn't call this live service. First is that there is obviously no way for Sony to profit from these updates since there was no monetization at all. They just gave out a free update to the free tech demo installed with every PS5. Second is that these updates weren't planned in advance from the game's launch. It was simply a nice addition to a fun little game. You wouldn't call Ratchet and Clank 2016 live service because they eventually added the bouncer to everyone regardless of pre order years later.

I wonder what would have happened if Firewalk had stayed independent and released Concord on their own. It certainly wouldn't have sold better but how long would the servers been kept on for? Would Firewalk have kept the servers on for months in the hopes that they can gain a playerbase resulting in them going bankrupt. Sony owning Firewalk and having the foresight to shut down the servers immediately might be the only reason the developers have a job still if Sony decides to keep the studio open.

@CutchuSlow Nope and what would making it free to play accomplish anyways? People still aren't interested in it and to make it f2p they would have to remove a lot to put it behind a paywall so not very enticing. The only way to get people interested would be rework the game into something entirely different and that would cost way too much money for pretty much guaranteed no money made back.

This would be like calling Super Smash Bros a graveyard of dead IP since over half the franchises represented in that game series haven’t had a new game in over two decades. Wait, no one ever tries to say that about Smash Bros so why even bring it up about Astro Bot unless you are trying to start discourse.

@get2sammyb my thoughts exactly. This reminds me of the days when a game would come out and have not only a strong single player mode but fully fleshed out multiplayer and sometimes co-op. Like the Transformers Cybertron games

@DennisReynolds space marine 2’s early access starts on the 5th so a day before. Verdict is still out on that game though as Saber’s track record is really hit or miss. Reviews are supposed to come out tomorrow so we will see how much this will affect Astrobot which I think will sell really well as it has been a while since there has been a good 3d platformer

@Balaam_ oh those games are worse from a technical standard but the thing is that they still sold enough to at least keep the lights on for more than 2 weeks. Concord really is the new standard for biggest gaming flop of all time along with ET, and like ET I think it’s failure is indicative of a wider problem in the industry with another video game bubble burst imminent.

On a side note the new trailer for Mario and Luigi Brothership just revealed the game takes place in Concordia. Now we just have to wait and see if Astrobot has us finding Concord special bots on the day Concord shuts down.

@colonelkilgore not to mention their preview of concord that called the game great and their preview of Marvel Rivals that deliberately said it was not as good as Concord

@DennisReynolds haha I didn't expect it to be shut down within 2 weeks. I was thinking they shut it down in December but 2 weeks is within the window where people can open fraud claims and sue the ***** out of Sony if they didn't offer refunds

@SleeplessKnight not even just modern. An argument can be made this is the new ET of gaming.

@rjejr They are refunding the game only because they are shutting the game down within the first month. People could make fraud claims on their credit cards within this timeframe. If the costs to run the servers for a couple more weeks wasn't more than the amount of money made from the sales they would have waited until October and not offered refunds

@Frmknst Way more than that. I work in that industry and the amount of power and money it takes to run these servers is huge. It isn't like they can just add or remove servers to accommodate a playerbase as it is based on software limitations. It would be the same amount of servers for 10 players or 1,000,000. The servers would cost tens of thousands per month to keep online, especially if Sony was renting them out from a realtor which is a common practice for even major businesses.

@LordFunkalot not with that episode of Secret Level coming up all about Concord. Unless they convince Amazon to scrap that episode entirely it will be an everlasting reminder of their failure

I just remembered there will be a whole episode of Amazon's Secret Level based around Concord in December. The game won't even exist at that point anymore and Sony paid for that episode to be made. God damn that is going to sting for Sony.

Wow. This is really is the biggest failure in video game history

@PuppetMaster WB did force Rocksteady to make the game live service. Jason Schreier released an in depth article explaining how WB just told them to make a Suicide Squad game. Rocksteady’s ceo Sefton Hill decided to make the game a live service game after seeing Fortnite’s and Destiny’s success as development started in 2017. This was all on Rocksteady and not the “big bad publisher” like gamers always parrot when they don’t think for two seconds.

@Boxmonkey the people at the top who made the bad creative decisions all moved on from Rocksteady about 2 years ago. Sefton Hill and a bunch of the top developers and executives at Rocksteady left to create their own studio once they realized they made a ***** game. They realized that gamers are stupid as most believe because they weren’t there when the game launched then they had nothing to do with Suicide Squad, despite working on the game for 5.5 years.

@nessisonett I mean the QA department did drop the ball pretty hard with this game. When the game launched it auto completed the story for people, spoiling the ending as soon as they started to play. Then there are the several bugs that make the game unplayable. The fact that all of these major things got past the QA department means they definitely were not good at their job

@K1LLEGAL Redfall was also riddled with technical issues. Its main issue wasn’t that it didn’t sell a lot but that there were so many bugs it was damn near unplayable at launch yet was released anyways. From a purely technical standpoint there is nothing wrong with Concord. Firewalk messed up from a creative standpoint but showed they could make a working game at launch (which is sadly not the norm these days), while Arkane Austin messed up from a technical standpoint as even with the final update the game is still a buggy mess. It is easier to have sympathy for someone making something really well done but no one is interested in, but not for someone who also did not make it well at all.

@DennisReynolds refunds will never be given out for Concord. Unlike the situation where Sony gave refunds for Cyberpunk 2077, Concord has 0 bugs and fully works as intended. If the game was unplayable from a technical standpoint then there could be a case made for refunds but that isn’t what is happening here.

The only thing wrong with the game is that there is not a large player base so the game won’t be supported long term. Even if Sony shuts down the servers next month no one who bought the game would be entitled to a refund. That is the thing with these always online live service games. There is a legal disclaimer that says the publisher has the right to end online services, thus making the game unplayable, at any time they see fit and the customer is agreeing to these terms with their purchase. As long as Sony doesn’t continue to sell the game on the PS store once the servers are no longer live since then the game would be unplayable Sony will never be in legal trouble and have no reason to give out refunds.

@OmegaStriver Concord has always planned to have micro transactions. The developers stated that the cosmetic store would launch I. October. This is similar to how the new Tekken game didn’t launch with micro transactions so it wouldn’t be in the official game description.

@trev666 best case scenario is that Firewalk becomes a support studio for Sony to help with the development of other first party games from a pure busy work perspective. The game doesn’t have any bugs or technical issues so the developers could be helpful when another studio needs extra hands on a big project. I just don’t see them ever being allowed to make a game on their own anymore. This is arguably one of the worst video game flops of all time, on par to the Atari ET game being so bad they had to bury it in the desert.

If Netease is essentially dead already I wonder what that means for Marvel Rivals as they are the main developer on that game. Will it be the one part of the company spared so the game gets continued support as it is already popular, or will they launch the game in December but not update it ever?

@Zeke68 since there has been no official announcement for the console and this tweet is the first bit of information we are getting on it, then yes you did dream that up

No disc drive would be an incredibly stupid decision as it would deter any owner of the original PS5 with a disc drive not to upgrade, resulting in far fewer sales. My guess is that this person only just saw the digital edition and is assuming there will be no separate disc version or the dev kit sent out didn’t have a disc drive as the original PS5 dev kit didn’t as well

@Loamy the devs are the ones who decided to make this game what it is though. Firewalk worked on this game for 6 years as a fully independent studio before they got bought by Sony. The studio is made up of a bunch of ex Activision and Bungoe devs who got fed up with making COD and Destiny. This is supposedly their uninhibited artistic vision. At a certain point the developers need to be held accountable for when a game is poorly made instead of blaming it on the “suits” all the time.

@DennisReynolds Maybe after the leaks Insomniac pulled what my parents did with Christmas/birthday presents. "If you sneak a look at your presents early you get nothing for Christmas/birthday"

@DennisReynolds You would think but that Venom spin off is supposed to come out first in 2025 with Wolverine in 2026. With Insomniac waiting until just 3 months before Spider-Man 2's release date to finally show off gameplay I doubt we see Wolverine any time soon

@atoqir Sony really did think this game was going to be a huge hit for them with all the marketing they have done for Conord such as this tv episode and the aforementioned limited edition controller. This stuff is planned out years in advance. What is so funny as Sony clearly bet on the wrong horse as for Helldivers 2 they had 0 marketing for it. If Sony was smart we would have had a helldivers controller and this episode would be about the helldivers universe but we aren't so lucky. The only official merch from Sony are those shirts and mugs clearly thrown together quickly in photoshop

@8bitOG Just want to point out that this game was in development for over 5 years while Firewalk was a completely independent studio and there was no "upper management" to tell them what to do. Sony acquired the studio with a bit over a year of development left before release. I doubt in the last year Sony suits forced the devs to make drastic changes to the game that made it so unpopular. This one is all on the devs

@MFTWrecks Not even just dead on PC but PS5 too. On the PS store on the best selling filter it is currently #44 on the list just a few days after release. For context game like COD Black Ops 3 which came out 9 years ago are higher up on the list. There isn't any recovering from this awful launch. I really didn't think there would be a worse game launch this year than Suicide Squad but here we are.

@somnambulance you say all those games deserved to fail but their fans would say otherwise. Just because you like Concord doesn’t mean it deserves to be a success. In fact all those games you listed have a bigger fan base than Concord does. The Suicide Squad subreddit has 10x more members than the concord subreddit. The truth is that Concord released in a heavily populated genre and not only did nothing different than the existing hero shooters but also does nothing better, and in some design choices not as good. When your competition is objectively better than your game and free while your game is even just half the price of a normal game these days then it was sent out to fail.

@UnlimitedSevens hard to say as the devs actually did make several changes to the early access version on Steam to make it more like Helldivers 2 after its runaway success. The game’s community also hates how HD2 has gotten way more press and recognition from the film series actors while an official starship troopers game hasn’t, so I can see the devs being petty like this.

@DennisReynolds I think they meant a PS5 remake of bloodborne rather than a sequel. People have been wanting that game to be in 60 fps since the PS4 pro got announced

@jrt87 no it is definitely not worse than Nintendo’s coin system. While you may get 1/5th of the coins for a physical purchase compared to digital purchases, you can only use the coins directly on games. Unlike stars you cannot use them to purchase store credit that doesn’t expire. At least with stars I was just able to redeem $20 for the ps store before the points expire that will remain in my store wallet until I need it. With Nintendo coins I only have a year to use them directly on purchases with no way to bank them for afterwards.

@ShonenJump121 the co founders left in 2022. They were the lead developers making Suicide Squad for 5 years. They are to blame for this game and only left the studio because they realized the game they made was incredibly bad and wanted to save their reputations.

@get2sammyb the problem is that those 3 games were only critical flops at launch but still financially successful due to pre release hype. The developers gained the capital needed to keep working on those games because they sold so well when they launched. The games this article referenced did not have the same type of success at launch which makes it impossible to turn the tide and make these games successful. The publishers know this and see the money bleeding so they were right to cut support. I know as gamers most of us only consider the entertainment or art side of video games but at the end of the day it is a business and live service games need money to survive. If a live service game makes no money at the start no amount of QOL updates will save it. There needs to be a strong financial base for them to survive long term.

@StrickenBiged it wasn’t abandoned quickly though. EA gave BioWare over 2 years to revamp the game post release and BioWare delivered on nothing. They released one small update 6 months post launch and then nothing else for almost 2 years. EA was actually more than fair with Anthem. The ex BioWare devs claimed BioWare weren’t even close to any kind of update when support got pulled so this wasn’t like with Redfall where they were just a week away from a new update. I know people like to act like publishers are the cause for every game failure but that isn’t true. A lot of times devs put something out and have no idea what they are doing. Everything concerning Anthem’s downfall is solely BioWare’s fault.

@Ainu20 yeah this whole comment sounds like when someone in their 60s tells a person in their 20s to just buy a house cash since it wasn’t hard when they did it. Completely out of touch with the current gaming industry. Warframe was one of the first live service games ever. Of course they had time to cultivate their audience as they had no competition. What this guy doesn’t realize is that for new live service games to succeed they need to take away players from existing live service games, which includes his own game. There is only a finite amount of players and the time they have for games so most only invest into one live service game at a time so making a live service game successful means making another one fail.

@StrickenBiged exactly those games saw incredible launches due to overhype in the case of NMS and franchise recognition for FO76. Even a strong launch doesn’t guarantee success. Avengers sold 2 million copies in its first month, it just didn’t retain any of the player base over time. The devs didn’t give up on the game quickly either. It was supported for 2.5 years before being shutdown, and in the end it was reported to have made no money during that time but instead loss $60 million for the publisher. This is why publishers pull the plug on these games quickly because if they don’t they are just bleeding money in today’s market.

I do want to point out one thing though. Anthem was not EA’s fault, at least not in the way you think it is. Ex BioWare devs have come forward since Anthem’s failure and explained what happened. EA gave BioWare complete freedom while making Anthem. BioWare’s management just had no idea what they were doing and said yes to every idea a developer had since the game would come together with “BioWare magic”. These ex developers stated they had no idea what Anthem was going to be until the reveal trailer premiered at E3 2019 because management had no clear vision for the game. In fact the reveal trailer wasn’t even completed until 30 minutes before its premiere. The only thing EA made BioWare do was keep the flying mechanic as that was going to be removed and every person who played Anthem will agree the flying is the best part of the game.

@Dalamar I get this is a Sony focused site so there is some “fanboyism” to be had but can we stop pretending that people who don’t like the game are hating on it for no reason? I tried the beta. The game is a dud. It isn’t intuitive or even fun. Really just lacks a soul. This is a game that seems to be created purely from a checklist handed down to developers by executives, and if this really is a passion project by Firewalk then Sony needs to rethink their acquisitions. The only people that like this game are the diehard Sony fanboys that think every Sony first party game is a masterpiece. This game is simply not good and will fail hard.

@LordServbot you joke about a cord being pulled but I know someone that did just that and a certain network, that I won’t identify for the sake of keeping my anonymity, got shutdown for 24 hours and made international news. It isn’t as simple as plugging the cable back in as these networks are only meant to go down after specific safeguards are taken and putting it back online means fixing a lot of things that are now out of whack.

@ChrisDeku counter point: WB execs liked how Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League was turning out during its development that they were considering increasing Rocksteady’s staff as they thought it would become a billion dollar franchise. Just because some suits from the parent company think a game is going to be great does not mean the general gaming audience will enjoy it.

@LordAinsley 3 put me off initially but I actually went back to play it fully for the first time a couple weeks ago and I am enjoying it. Definitely not my favorite but still great. I just wasn’t in the right headspace at the time to enjoy it.

@PhiZero games getting delayed unexpectedly happen all the time. Breath of the Wild was supposed to come out in 2014 exclusively for the Wii U but kept getting delayed by a year over and over. Cyberpunk kept getting delayed a few weeks before it was supposed to release. A game with no public release date getting delayed internally two months later is highly possible and probable. Nothing here suggests either of these sources are “talking out of their ass”

@trev666 this starship troopers game has been in early access for nearly 2 years on PC. When Helldivers blew up a few months ago this game’s subreddit was seriously pissed off.