The people that inked the deals are perhaps gone, but let's not kid ourselves that Hermen Hulst had absolutely no say in the whole deal. Hulst was the head of PlayStation Studios. He would have been directly involved in the decision process, in the evaluation of the prospects of a new studio and the game they were developing and would have to report back to just a handful of higher-ups at Playstation and Sony Corp.
I agree, but agendas are usually set at the top. It's very likely the heads of playstation throughout the years are the ones looking at how much CoD, Fortnite, Overwatch, etc. are generating on Playstation and are basically given a mandate to someone like Hulst to try and capture that lightning in a bottle. Hulst takes responsibility for the ultimate product, but at the end of the day Concord suffered from something that's intrinsically unappealing but at the same time mechanically and technically competent, so I can see where there was an illusion that this game could become a success, especially in a world where so many other shooters of that ilk were. But it's the fallacy of not doing anything that genuinely stands out and having designs that are intended to appeal to a wide audience but ends up completely sacrificing any sort of compelling identity to achieve that.
People want Hulst's head to roll for Concord's failure, but he's also been responsible for a great cadence of titles on the PS5 platform, and in particular this year has been especially strong with the likes of Helldivers 2, Astro Bot, and partnerships like FF7R, SH2, Stellar Blade, and Rise of the Ronin. Nobody is going to have a 1000 batting average, and there's not been a single year where PS5 has been absolutely devoid of content, and has arguably seen the strongest start (content wise) to a playstation platform since the PS2 era.
So I am not quick to dismiss him despite the massive failure that is Concord, there's also lots of success as well.
