Concord is a newly released live-service hero shooter game by PlayStation and Firewalk Studios. While it’s certainly packed with action, ever since its first reveal, it has met with considerable backlash.
With the hero-shooter genre being extremely cramped, gamers couldn’t understand why PlayStation would heavily invest in another one that seems generic and boring.
To no one’s surprise, when Concord debuted on 23rd August, it proved to be a massive failure. Many blamed the title’s $40 price tag for the failure and lack of excitement. However, when you look at Sea of Thieves, which launched at the same price point, it’s clear that the hero shooter didn’t fail due to that aspect.
Concord’s $40 Price Tag is Not the Problem
When the PS5 version of Sea of Thieves debuted on April 30th, 2024, roughly one month after the game’s sixth anniversary of its PC and Xbox One debut, it became an instant smash hit.
The live-service pirate game managed to top the charts of the PlayStation Store despite coming with a $40 price tag, proving that the price doesn’t matter. As long as it’s a fun and exciting game, players won’t mind shelling out the amount.
However, the same can’t be said for Concord. The hero-shooter has only reportedly managed to sell around 25,000 units as of August 28th, and it’s not down to its high price. The game has failed because it’s quite boring and brings nothing new to the table.
I don’t think Concord isn’t selling because of the $40 price point or weak marketing. It’s pretty simple: it’s not a good game, so nobody is buying it. Sea of Thieves is also $40 on PlayStation, but has reportedly sold over 1 million copies because it’s matured into a great game pic.twitter.com/PQlAOXWz6Q
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) August 31, 2024
You’ll be surprised to know that Concord reportedly has spent eight years in development, with its pre-production kicking off even before Firewalk Studios was formed in 2018.
When such a game is released, combined with a lack of commercial momentum and the inability to separate itself from its many rivals, it’s destined to fail.
Despite Sony’s best efforts, Concord had an all-time peak player count of just 697 players, and at the time of writing, it’s been a week since the game had its full release. Players aren’t excited to jump into this hero-shooter, at least on PC.
Will Concord’s Post-Launch Content Drops Succeed?
It’s great to see that Firewalk Studios is committed to the project despite its shortcomings. The developers have already confirmed the next five months of Concord’s future updates, but there’s a lot of speculation among gamers about whether the game would even make it that long.
According to SteamDB data, Concord has just 96 active players active on Steam at the time of this writing. It wouldn’t make sense for the developers to keep updating Concord if these low numbers continue to get even more horrendous in the upcoming weeks.
We can’t forget about the tragedy of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The developers for the title released two seasons of the content plan over the last few months, but the game failed to lure in new players or even retain the existing players.
The only possible way Concord‘s future plans will be worth it all is if the game can manage to push up player numbers, and the only way to do so is by delivering some drastic changes.
With that said, have you tried playing this brand-new hero shooter? If so, let us know in the comments.
