Concord has been out for a couple of days and is already struggling to maintain an audience of several hundred concurrent players on Steam. I’m unsure how it’s performing on PS5, but even if the numbers are better, this isn’t a good ⛦sign.
From its underwhelming and polarising reveal, nobody expected Concord to succeed. It’s a hero shooter bein☂g released into an oversaturated landscape where gamers have long grown to hate live-service titles that aren’t already a part of the existing landscape. Unless you happen to be Fortnite, Apex Legends, Call of Duty, or Destiny, you don’t have a place at the table.
It’s not uncommon for giants in the genre to be subject to intense criticism either, 𝔍so any game trying to break in faces an uphill battle where extraordinary luck is required to survive. Whe💧n it comes to Concord, it came around at the wrong place, the wrong time, and is a laughably misguided attempt by Sony to chase its own shallow corporate interests.
But now that it’s here, and has launched with a predictable whimper, lessons will be learned from Concord as we move forward. Firewalk Studios recently revealed that the project was in the works for roughly eight years, with Sony putting abundant resources🔯 into the game following its acquisition of the developer because it naively believed that live-service was the future.
I still find myself mourning the fact that Japan Studio closed up shop while millions were wasted on a project like this that anyone outside a boardroom could have identifꩵied as a future failure.
Yet here we are, and the next few years will be a harsh series oꩲf lessons for Sony and all of its first-party studios as they refocus their efforts, determine what live-service projects can or simply will not work, or whether there is more viability in single-player blockbusters than they first thought.
Back in 2022, , . Since then, a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:number have been cancelled, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:rescoped due to layoffs, or have launched to a commercial mauling.
I have to imagine that very delicate conversations are now taking place between Sony and Bungie, with the Japanese console giant arguably overpaying for the Destiny developer a few years ago because it believed it to be an expert on the live-service titles it hoped w✨ould o🤪ne day dominate its library.
Since then, the studio has experienced dropping profits and its own consistent stream of layoffs. Marathon is currently in development and is planned to be an extraction shooter of sorts, but I have to wonder if even that will 👍soꩵon pivot in response.
PlayStation used to be a brand defined by its shockingly unique selection of ex𝐆clusives. Even up until the PS4 generation, the variety of games on offer was staggering. Infamous, Knack, Gravity Rush, Bloodborne, Killzone, The Order 1886, Uncharted, The Last of Us, and many other exclusives, big and small, which defined the diversity that PlayS🌞tation had bartered with since its inception.
In recent years, thanks to ballooning development costs and production times, that identity has been lost as it chases bigger and bi✃gger profits. But it was ultimately all for nothing, and has seen it slowly but surely lose touch with its cultural identity.
Concord is going to cement that fractured identity, conside🥃ring it arrived with a lower player count than commercial failures like Redfall, Babylon’s Fall, and even LotR: Gollum. It’s not indicative of whether Concord is a bad game or not, since its shooting mechanics and roster of imaginative heroes are pretty wonderful, but it does point to whether it should exist.
How good a game like this actually is doesn’t matter when it fails to pierce an oversaturated market and appeal to an audience that is alread꧃y sick and tired of live service trapping. They have been for years, and chances areꦺ Firewalk knew the writing was on the wall for a while.
Thousands of people could give Concord a chance and pick up a copy, but if they fail to stick around for longer than a few weeks, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Games like this require large audiences to remain const🅰antly engaged and critical of the experience, or it’s doomed to be left behind. I saw that eventuality coming, so did you, and I bet S🐈ony and Firewalk also did.
The post-mortem for this game is going to be tragic, and result in widespread ramifications for the live service market that I hope wi🐼ll result in Sony returning to what it does best. I’m not saying there is no value in trying something new, but when those risks are made in a genre which is designed for profit over creativity, you are already fighting the wrong battle.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Concord
- Top Critic Avg: 64/100 Critics Rec: 23%
- Released
- August 23, 2024
- ESRB
- t
- Developer(s)
- 🐎 Fiꦬrewalk Studios
- Publisher(s)
- 🐼 Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
Concord is an upcoming FPS from Firewalk Studios, part of𝐆 the PlayStation Studios family. A PvP multiplayer title, it is slated for lau꧟nch on both PS5 and PC in 2024.
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