Sony Concord (multiplayer hero FPS | PC/PS5) - update (09/20): game director departs Firewalk Studios, development costs reportedly $400 million

[Keyser_Soze]

5 minutes ago, Moa said:

I always thought this game looked pretty good and the previews seemed positive. $40 was too big an ask for me, especially with the writing on the wall with the general rejection of the game, but I’ve never quite understood the hatred this game seemed to inspire. 

 

I think it was a three pronged thing.

 

Sony fans rejecting a live service game because they like single player narrative games. I think even with that reveal trailer that everyone was lukewarm about. Even if it was like an RPG like the GOG, with those quality looking cutscenes, I think it could have found an audience.

 

Then there were folks who weren't inspired by the trailer or character designs in any way, and it's a crowded space with other hero shooters that are free and this one is asking for $40. So you ask $40 up front for a game that isn't even as good as the games it is trying to copy. - This is worse on Playstation because if a game is paid you have to pay for PS+ to play it online. Free 2 play games you don't need PS+ to play the game online so. It's a $40 game plus whatever PS+ costs.

 

Then you have the anti LGBTQ+ ghouls out there who just wanted to celebrate the game's failure and celebrated "woke gaming / DEI failure" etc - I think those were the most outspoken people (the ones you're talking about hatred, those people)

 

Normal people just thought meh or I don't want this.

[TheShader]

1 hour ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Judging from the blog post, I'm fairly certain that the "notional" plan will be to relaunch as an F2P title.

I'm in, then, I'll redownload a F2P version, gladly. And I don't think the situation is that grim. Game developers have brought back games from worse. Hell, FFXIV almost bankrupt Square and the insane choice to rebuild it from the ground up saved the company. I'd call that situation a far worse situation than this. And there's models out there of games going from a full paid product to F2P, albeit on the developer's terms but there's still lessons to learn and pull from with those titles. I'm personally rooting for the devs but we'll see in time.

[skillzdadirecta]

2 hours ago, Bacon said:

Will this go down as an even bigger blunder than ET? If not, this feels like the next big one.

Suicide Squad vs Justice League says 

[Bacon]

Just now, skillzdadirecta said:

Suicide Squad vs Justice League says 

Ain't even close to this big of a blunder

[Keyser_Soze]

I also think Sony didn't do the game any favors. I think I said in this thread already but the Friday the game came out and leading up to it I saw no promotional stuff about it. The only thing I heard about the game in the week before was that less people had played the beta than prior weeks, which isn't great "promotion" for your game.

 

And while I do feel for the developers here, this is the game they wanted to make. It was unappealing to a great audience and if that's the game they wanted to make then they accomplished their mission.

 

This makes me look back at Hyenas. That game was cancelled before it came out, and while I think it has some similar issues to this game, I think it might have done better. At least the whole concept of the game was a novel idea at least.

 

So if @Bacon wants to talk blunders, Hyenas is it. That didn't even get released and was SEGAs most expensive game ever. When these games hit they hit and when they don't they fail miserably. This team really should just move on. They certainly have what it takes to make a good looking and good playing game, they just need to put it into the right kind of game.

[Bacon]

2 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

I also think Sony didn't do the game any favors. I think I said in this thread already but the Friday the game came out and leading up to it I saw no promotional stuff about it. The only thing I heard about the game in the week before was that less people had played the beta than prior weeks, which isn't great "promotion" for your game.

 

And while I do feel for the developers here, this is the game they wanted to make. It was unappealing to a great audience and if that's the game they wanted to make then they accomplished their mission.

 

This makes me look back at Hyenas. That game was cancelled before it came out, and while I think it has some similar issues to this game, I think it might have done better. At least the whole concept of the game was a novel idea at least.

 

So if @Bacon wants to talk blunders, Hyenas is it. That didn't even get released and was SEGAs most expensive game ever. When these games hit they hit and when they don't they fail miserably. This team really should just move on. They certainly have what it takes to make a good looking and good playing game, they just need to put it into the right kind of game.

 

At least Hyeans didn't release. Prolly would have been a bigger blunder. SEGA saved face by not releasing a turd.

[Keyser_Soze]

At least they outdid Microsoft's biggest flop

 

 

Anyone remember this one? It wasn't even live service.

[DPCyric]

16 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Ain't even close to this big of a blunder

 

Is it not? Game came from a developer with multiple successful hits, had a MAJOR delay because people weren't happy with it, and still ended up being a big flop. That game was something the audience clearly didn't want, had a massive budget, and burned the credibility of the companies leadership. Concord is from a smaller dev chasing the hot trend and destined to die. 

[SaysWho?]

1 minute ago, DPCyric said:

 

Is it not? Game came from a developer with multiple successful hits, had a MAJOR delay because people weren't happy with it, and still ended up being a big flop. That game was something the audience clearly didn't want, had a massive budget, and burned the credibility of the companies leadership. Concord is from a smaller dev chasing the hot trend and destined to die. 

 

Don't even think I'd call it chasing the hot trend since they've been developing this for 8 years.

[Bacon]

1 minute ago, DPCyric said:

 

Is it not? Game came from a developer with multiple successful hits, had a MAJOR delay because people weren't happy with it, and still ended up being a big flop. That game was something the audience clearly didn't want, had a massive budget, and burned the credibility of the companies leadership. Concord is from a smaller dev chasing the hot trend and destined to die. 

Concord was legit DoA. Not even Suicide Squad was that bad.

[SaysWho?]

Analysis from Daniel Ahmad, Director of Research & Insights at Niko Partners:

 

Here's the thing. Concord on paper has strong gameplay mechanics and is content complete, but it's also extremely over-engineered. 

 

They very clearly built this to be a AAA-level live experience from day one with multiple game modes, high end graphics (Motion capture), a ton of story building and a long term plan. 

 

Sure, that's important, and definitely a criticism of many live service games not being polished or forward looking enough, but they seem to have missed on everything else and they focused on the wrong things in terms of their long term plan. 

 

To put it simply, the game failed to give hero shooter players a reason to switch from their existing game, or other players a reason to try it out. The game itself wasn't necessarily innovative and the character designs were uninspired. It didn't stand out and felt stuck in the OW1 era.

 

The marketing was also a miss with the only real info about the game dropping a few months before launch. A community driven approach may have played out better and led to changes prior to releases. 

 

Combine all of the above, throw the $40 upfront cost on top, and it's no wonder no one purchased it. There's clearly a talented team here, but it's also clear why Sony just made the decision they did. At this point I don't think Concord can make a come back.

[Keyser_Soze]

4 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

Analysis from Daniel Ahmad, Director of Research & Insights at Niko Partners:

 

You could have just quoted me ITT.

[chakoo]

I think this game will be written off by Sony. There are many examples of a game bouncing back after being given a chance to re-bake but I feel Sony will rather just move on.

 

With that said, I did quickly order a copy from amazon.ca before it's gone. The collector in me is curious to see if the low user/purchase count makes this a pricy title in the future due to system completionists.

 

[SaysWho?]

1 minute ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

You could have just quoted me ITT.

 

I'll be the judge of who I quote.  

[TheShader]

I feel like the only person in the universe that liked the characters. At least on the surface. They're a bit more down to Earth which I like considering most other games are very cartoonish. The problem is they're not very distinctive in actual gameplay. In TF2 if a Pyro is running at you then you instantly recognize the player as a Pyro. In the heat of battle on Concord the characters might as well be a bunch of player generated characters running around. In the heat of battle I didn't feel like I could instantly go 'Oh, that's this specific character who has this specific playset'.

[Keyser_Soze]

2 minutes ago, TheShader said:

In the heat of battle I didn't feel like I could instantly go 'Oh, that's this specific character who has this specific playset'.

 

Except for the yellow garbage man who sucks bullets. He was very distinctive and bad.

[chakoo]

Hehe, Just doing a quick pass on stores but the physical game is now no longer available for purchase and in many cases doesn't show up when you search for it. It was available after the announcement but it's very much being wiped from stores. 

[TheShader]

11 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Except for the yellow garbage man who sucks bullets. He was very distinctive and bad.

Actually, agree on this one, I mentally blocked him out from my memory.

[skillzdadirecta]

Yeah I don't see how this game can make a comeback and if the plan was to make it free to play, wouldn't they just keep the game online while they rework it? I jsut don't see them sinking anymore money into this game. I suspect they are going to cut their losses and move on.

[DPCyric]

1 hour ago, Bacon said:

Concord was legit DoA. Not even Suicide Squad was that bad.

 

Many high profile multiplayer games have been basically DoA (Anthem and Lawbreakers immediately come to mind). People expected this one to be DoA, Sony could have pivoted and released it at a lower price point even but they did not. Suicide Squad even had a major IP to help sell it unlike this. Sure it didn't bomb as bad but financially I bet it was a much bigger failure (and much like Concord was clearly something people just didn't want).

[Keyser_Soze]

45 minutes ago, TheShader said:

Actually, agree on this one, I mentally blocked him out from my memory.

 

Also, I don't have an issue with down to earth / grounded characters but at least make them look cool.  I mean Ryu is just a guy in a karate gi but he's a cool guy. Even Dhaslim is just a plain Indian guy but looks cool.

 

Concords characters had really off putting color combinations, their gear looked like junk. Maybe there was a reason for it but the developers didn't put a compelling reason in the game. For the most part they looked like regular people. But I think this is something you can get away with if it had a cool style, but unfortunately realism isn't truly a style, or at least not an appealing one for this type of game.

 

Maximilian Dood often says, at least in regard to fighting games, the roster is what makes or breaks the game because that's what everyone sees first. If people don't like what they see they likely aren't going to play the game. I think that mindset carries over to this game. Maybe you don't like the pixar-esque look of Overwatch but at least it had a style and appealing characters. It was interesting to see the lead up to Concord when Juno dropped, it was like hey they did it again and she was cooler than anyone in Concord.

 

I also think of Zenless Zone Zero dropping and it was oozing with style. I know no one here plays it but everything in that game just blows my mind every time.

 

Concord just needed some of that juice.

[Xbob42]

[Bacon]

yellow blue guy from gotg

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

At least they outdid Microsoft's biggest flop

 

 

Anyone remember this one? It wasn't even live service.

 

Maybe people need to stop making character personality based shooters.  You don't even get to see who you are controlling outside of their hands a lot of the time.

 

There was a time when it was original and exciting, but that's largely because shooters of the time lacked so much personality in general.  But today, people won't automatically care about your 'original' version of an overweight tank.  Your own Guardians of the Galaxy green guy.  Your telekinetic threat in student debt.

 

The Timesplitters series was the antithesis to this.  It was goofy, but it didn't pretend like you should give a shit.  But I'd question if there's even space for that today.

[Paperclyp]

I would have played redfall if it was good. I struggle to buy into a multiplayer competitive thing because it’s difficult to play enough to hang anymore. It’s easier to sell me on a BR or deathmatch thing cuz I don’t feel like I’m disappointing a team. 

[DarkStar189]

Like some of you have said, I do not see this game coming back. Even from the first trailer we got(wasn't that just a few months ago?) it looked super generic. Everybody compared the vibe to Guardians of the Galaxy, I thought that as well. But my first thought seeing the gameplay was "hmm do I want to take on another hero shooter and learn this whole thing?".  The gameplay looked very generic in the videos and hearing there was no ultimates seemed like an odd choice.

The game released and it was a pretty easy choice for players to just not get involved. Overwatch is still big. A ton of people are still playing Fortnite. How the heck can they re-release this game and make a splash...and a profit? Feel like this one is going to be written off as a loss.

[JPDunks4]

Does the studio survive this?

 

It's their first and only game.

 

Does Sony just scrap them?

[skillzdadirecta]

54 minutes ago, DPCyric said:

Sure it didn't bomb as bad but financially I bet it was a much bigger failure

Yeah I'm thinking Suicide Squad Kills The Justice league is probably the bigger flop due to how much it cost. They spent a ton on production and marketing.

[crispy4000]

Meanwhile:

 

Deadlock peaked at over 170k players during its playtest this last weekend

WWW.SHACKNEWS.COM

---

Currently, the only way into the Deadlock playtest is being invited by Valve or a friend who has the game installed already.

[chakoo]

lawl fleebay

 

 

Right now it's mainly people trying to flip the game for $150 with only like 1/2 selling that high and the rest slightly lower. This will die down quickly but still kind of interesting to see.

[Spork3245]

8 hours ago, chakoo said:

lawl fleebay

 

 

Right now it's mainly people trying to flip the game for $150 with only like 1/2 selling that high and the rest slightly lower. This will die down quickly but still kind of interesting to see.

The fact that any are selling even near that price is concerning 

[chakoo]

1 hour ago, Spork3245 said:

The fact that any are selling even near that price is concerning 

Collectors. Just wait till we see Wata grated versions for $1k. lol 

[DarkStar189]

1 hour ago, Spork3245 said:

The fact that any are selling even near that price is concerning 

Without any single player, I can't picture Concord being worth much in the future. Maybe to the hardcore system complete crowd.

[SuperSpreader]

20 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Oh wow.

 

An important update on Concord

BLOG.PLAYSTATION.COM

---

Concord fans -- we’ve been listening closely to your feedback since the launch of Concord on PlayStation 5 and PC and want to thank everyone who has joined the journey aboard the Northstar. Your support and the passionate community that has grown around the...

 

 

 

They're gonna write it all off as a tax loss.

[SuperSpreader]

16 hours ago, Bacon said:

yellow blue guy from gotg

 

Hey you know the one, the one no one cares about or knows his name. Remember that guy? He was in the background? Like.. he did a thing in one of the movies, I don't know.. it was a little bit heroic? Did he die maybe? I think he was funny maybe. You know that guy. Well, let's base our marketing on him.