Sony’s latest multiplayer shooter, Concord, has found itself in deeper, more troubled waters merely five days following its launch.
Initially released with high hopes, Firesprite and Sony are finding out what happens to a game when you don’t listen to the very people you should have paid attention to all along.
On Steam, Concord’s peak player count barely reached 700 at launch, a number that has since dropped to under 250 players during peak hours. The PlayStation Store is in just as bad of a shape, with the game struggling to break into the top 40 best-selling titles. These figures are particularly concerning for a multiplayer-focused game, where a healthy player base is crucial for matchmaking and overall longevity.
Surprisingly enough, Concord showed some early promise. As a new IP from one of Sony’s more recent acquisitions, it aimed to carve out a niche in the hero shooter genre while eschewing the mechanics of its contemporaries—heavy monetization and a relative lack of game modes—but the $40 price tag and a general lack of uniqueness have led to a lackluster reception and dwindling player counts.
The game’s poor performance raises questions about Sony’s live service strategy.
Despite cutting its initial plans into half and canceling The Last of Us multiplayer last year, Sony remains heavily invested in the genre.
Then again, after coming off the success of Helldivers 2, which sold an impressive 12 million copies, Sony had every reason to believe that Concord wouldn’t be this bad. Instead, it’s one of the worst AAA games to come out in recent years, seeing eight years and hundreds of millions of dollars in development down the drain.
Where did Concord go wrong? You could start with being generic. In a market that’s dominated by free-to-play titans like Fortnite and Apex Legends, Concord’s price is steep for an unproven IP. The game’s derivative design fails to establish a distinct identity, leaving players questioning why they should choose Concord over other existing alternatives.
And it’s not the genre, either. Valve is enjoying tremendous success with Deadlock at the moment and it hasn’t even come out to the general public yet.
With significant resources dedicated to its development, Concord’s failure does raise red flags about what happened during the game’s development. How did Sony even think of green lighting this game, especially after it already received feedback during the game’s similarly ill-received beta tests?
Now that Concord is getting more coverage online than it does players, is free-to-play on the cards? While possible, it isn’t without challenges. It could alienate early adopters who paid full price. It would also mean overhauling the game’s economical model, which was one of the few things that set Concord apart.
As a test run, Sony may limit the free offering to PlayStation Plus subscribers, but is it enough to make people care about Concord?
Keep in mind that the open beta, which was free to all, peaked at just 2,300 players on Steam. This implies issues with the game that run deeper than its pricing. Simply removing the cost barrier isn’t enough at this point.
With Bungie firing the director of Marathon for sexual harassment, Helldivers 2 in a bind, and Concord failing to make an impression, it’s safe to say that Jim Ryan isn’t leaving much of a positive legacy as he was one of the biggest proponents of Sony’s live service push.
The only consolation here is that this incident might encourage Sony to invest in its bread and better single-player narrative-driven titles even more.
Still, our hearts go out to the developers of Concord for putting in the work. It’s on Sony to put their developers in a position to succeed, even if it means scrapping a game if it doesn’t meet expectations.
