Concord by Sony – the $400 Million Flop
Most gamers know what they like. It is an industry that has the potential to make people huge sums of money, thanks in no small part to the loyalty of the fans that turn to it for their entertainment.
Regardless of what it is that you enjoy doing with your time, there is almost certainly going to be a game out there that is aimed at allowing you to enjoy yourself.
From football games to games about stealing cars via first-person shooters and games that revolve around alien invasions, if you want to play a game about it you’ll probably be able to.
In the case of Concord, though, you won’t be able to play it any more because of just how badly it failed.
What is Concord?
Whether the question is ‘What is Concord?’ or ‘What was Concord?’ is a matter for some debate. What we can tell you about it, though, is that Sony released the shooter came in the hope that they would be able to attract an audience that had already fallen in love with games such as Overwatch and Valorant.
It was released towards the end of August 2024 but by the first week of September it has been pulled from the market by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game was intended to be a multiplayer first-person hero shooter offering, which was set in a retro-futuristic sci-fi world that saw humans and humanoid aliens coexist.
Concord players are throwing themselves off cliffs in-game to grind to max level before the game shuts downpic.twitter.com/dPW8lqIqA8
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) September 3, 2024
The idea behind the game was that it would see competing mercenaries take part in various battles. Developed over eight years, it was made up of sixteen characters with the aim being to add more characters and maps to the gameplay in the months and years that followed.
Having been developed by Firewalk Studios in Bellevue, Washington, in association with Firewalk’s parent company ProbablyMonsters, it was bought by Sony Interactive Entertainment in the April of 2023 and was confirmed during the the PlayStation Showcase the following month, complete with a CGI trailer of what players could expect from it.
Why it Flopped so Badly
Alarm bells began ringing for Sony when a beta version of the game was released in July and garnered underwhelming numbers. It was released officially on both Windows and PlayStation 5 on the 23rd of August and was seen as a commercial failure almost immediately.
On the Steam platform, via which the majority of people play their games nowadays, it failed to gain more than 700 simultaneous players. That did not compare well to the 400,000 Steam players who signed in to play Helldivers 2 earlier in the year when that game was released on PlayStation 5 and PC, leaving many to have major concerns.
@bluethunder Concord is SHUTTING DOWN FOREVER! #concord #playstation #gaming #gamingontiktok ♬ original sound – Blue Thunder
One of the big reasons for its failure might well have been the high price point. In the United Kingdom, for example, it had a cost of £40 for users to play it. At the same time, it was trying to compete with games that are free-to-play, so there was little desire amongst many gamers to spend their money on a title that was being deemed to be ‘mediocre’ by the vast majority of the critics.
It was apparently made in a culture of ‘toxic positivity‘ that meant that critics were simply ignored rather than listened to, with no adaptations to the game or the manner of release put in place in a way that might have been useful to the makers.
The Biggest Flop Ever?
When discussing the matter of Concord‘s flop on their podcast The Rest is Entertainment, Marina Hyde and Richard Osman pondered whether or not it might be the biggest flop ever in the entertainment industry.
Although the exact amount of money spent on the game’s creation is a matter of debate, with some suggesting that around $400 million was spent on it and others arguing that it was closer to $200 million, the reality is that no money whatsoever has been recouped by it. Not only did Sony pull the game from Steam and other platforms, those that had paid money for it were given a refund by the company.
That means that there will be precisely no return of money for Sony over the game. With films that are deemed ‘flops’, as an example, they usually make at least some money back at the box office and some of them will go on to make money via DVD, Blu-Ray or streaming sales in the future, especially if they become ‘cult’ hits.
There is no room for Concord to become a cult hit in the future as Sony have pulled it and there will be no real reason for them to invest more money into it in the future in order to put it back on the market. Whether it is the biggest flop of all time or just one of the biggest, there is no question that it is a flop.