What Sony’s Studio Business Group Should Learn From Concord’s Failure

Ah, Concord. Such hope. Such dreams. Such abject failure.

The live-service “hero shooter” (a term I have issues with for another discussion) was intended to challenge the Overwatch franchise. It was supposed to be the big game for Sony game studio Firewalk Studios and blow gaming away. Amazon even did an episode of their gaming anthology Secret Level exploring the origin of the outlaw Freegunners that the game is centered around. Instead the game that was in development for eight years and cost $400 million to produce died in under two weeks due to low sales and player numbers, leading to the studio being shut down in 2024. That means the game dies before the Secret Level episode hit Amazon Prime. What was the problem? Working with notorious consultant firm Sweet Baby Inc, a group known for caring more about politics than gameplay, was most likely a huge part of it. Sony even refunded the players who bought the game and it may be one game Stop Killing Games wouldn’t even try to save.

Sony would probably love for this to die, but Concord is one of those cautionary tales that seems to persist. Hermen Hurst, Head Of Sony’s Business Group, recently gave an interview where he stated Sony’s game division would be a lot more cautious in the future, as they also bought into the company’s hype. Unfortunately, studios like Firewalk and distributors like Sony keep making the same mistakes by listening to the wrong people. Like I was saying yesterday with Hollywood, people who don’t really care about what they’re making get into the “right” positions and steer a company based on the “cool kids” and the latest cause du jour rather than the people who actually play video games. And it’s rather easy to listen to gamers to find out what they think. They run blogs and YouTube channels that aren’t there to kiss the rears of the developers in exchange for early access they believe will draw a readership and viewership. You just need to get past the shill access media and see what your actual customers believe, a proud function of the internet.

So what did they say about the game? Let’s look at a handful of videos and try to figure out what the players actually said about Concord. Note that some videos will contain swearing, but the only violence we’ll see is the level of the T for Teen rated game.

First let’s look at IGN’s review of the game, since they’re one of those shills I mentioned.

Wow, even the positive review has a bunch of negatives. From this review it sounds like after all that time and money there was zero innovation, as if nobody was paying attention to what other games in the genre were doing and coming up with their own innovations. Still, it doesn’t sound like a game that spent slightly more time in the Playstation store than I did at my temp job. Maybe some of these other reviews will shine some light. Asmongold has a reaction video to this review. What does he say?

No, still not seeing anything more than boredom. Let’s see what WhatCulture’s gaming channel has to say about Concord.

Still sounds mid. That’s still bad for a game that took that much time and money to get out, hardly The Game!!!!!!, is it? But I want an angry review. Not some rage fest, but someone who can explain why he or she absolutely hates this game. Okay, this last video declared the game “garbage” so maybe we’ll finally get some anger in this one. Okay, one last time. Griffin Gaming, what you got? Besides swearing, which he does use often.

“Woke” characters? Well, Sweet Baby Inc was involved, so ugly people and a questionable idea of “diversity” is the norm from games they’re involved in. It also sounds like the game doesn’t work well on PC, which makes you wonder why they bothered. I don’t know about Playstation but PC gamers definitely deserved the money they got back if it doesn’t work, and with a two week shelf life it’s not like they were going to fix the problem.

This also led to a number of live-service games cancelled, and the controversy about live-service, one of the issues brought up by Stop Killing Games, doesn’t make it much of a loss. It doesn’t sound like anyone wanted to play this game. So what should Sony take away from this?

• Make your characters less ugly, or at least diversify with some attractive characters that the players actually want to look at, if not play as. We can argue about the pronouns and missing races, depending on the lore of the game, but at least give diversity of personality and appearance beyond the checkboxes.
• Make sure your game works in all released formats. Players also complain about the idea that they can fix any bugs with DLC and get it out the door as soon as possible. This game will never be playable on the computer, and nobody wants to play it on the console, so that won’t work. Release a finished product and add bonuses afterwards.
• Pay attention to what your competitors are doing. You had eight years to come up with something good, but the focus was on “diverse” characters and not on innovation. Stagnation is death and this game was destined to die. Add something new if you’re going to spend that much money and that much time, then charge the prices I assume they did. Obviously I can’t look them up because the game practically doesn’t exist anymore.

Remember, these are videos from the beta or final release of the game. There were concerns never addressed during marketing or creation of the game being levied just by previews and early/leaked news. Listen to what the people who actually spend money on these games want and find ways to make money while fulfilling all the reasonable requests. That should be the takeaway and what Sony’s various gaming studios should be looking into going forward. Otherwise, the history of Concord will just repeat itself.