FoxMcChief
Gold Member
Of course this is the biggest flop in gaming history. There’s nothing close.
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Concord bombs on Steam with less than 1k players on launch day
- Thread starter Dr. Samuel Hayden
- Start date
Moridianae
Member
Or they impulse bought *something* since Microsoft was(I think) going on or well into their buying spree and it was a moment of "Well, we gotta do something and GAAS is the trend to chase".
Calverz
Member
The circus surrounding this game continues. Thanks Jimbo
Killjoy-NL
Banned
Yeah, that was my point.
Little Chicken
Banned
$200m is a big enough investment to try and salvage. F2P announcement around the corner.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Jim did the classic "farting in the elevator as he's leaving".
jshackles
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Depends on whether or not they want to gamble throwing good money after bad
BlackTron
Member
I foresee F2P and then shut servers in time. There has to be a stop-loss somewhere.
ManaByte
Gold Member
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I don’t know where that $200M comes from, but I got to admit that seems fishy.
I don’t see how this game could take $200M to make. That kind of money is for AAA established franchises. No way a noname first game for a studio has that high of a budget. Unless someone thinks that $200M is the cost of buying the whole studio which also includes dev costs too..
I’ll take a wild guess and say this game costs no more than $50M all in to make. And that even includes limited marketing and those YT vignettes.
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ManaByte
Gold Member
The $40 is to fund their dumb weekly cinematic stories that everyone just skips. It was a stupid idea in the first place.
They'll stop doing those and then make it F2P.
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ManaByte
Gold Member
It's $200M because they made it like a TLOU or GoW game. Full motion capture, paid actors, weekly produced cinematic storylines. They were trying to make a FPS version of the big budget "movie" games PlayStation is known for. All of this from a studio run by a guy with ZERO game development experience. The studio head was a MARKETING executive on Destiny at Activision (not Bungie like people are reporting).
jshackles
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Even if the true cost to create this game is closer to your $50M number, conservative estimates put sales of this game currently between 50k-75k units sold across all platforms. At $39.99 a pop, that's $2M-$3M in sales (and Valve gets 30% of those Steam copies sold! And don't forget about all the free keys given away that skew those numbers!). That's only, at best, a 6% return on investment, even if the production cost is as low as you think.
And, unfortunately, online-only multiplayer-only games like this typically don't have long legs unless the player base somehow steadily grows over time. Even if your $50M is accurate, they would need to sell 1,250,313 copies over the game's lifespan at full price just to break even (and again, this number ignores Valve's cut). I think we all know by now that they'll end up nowhere close to that.
tmlDan
Member
Well, here's hoping there's some sort of redemption arc, we should never root for people to go out of business.
Despite Concord sucking, i can see the potential in the studio. Maybe a rejig of the staff will help.
ReBurn
Gold Member
My brain wants to believe Sony bought the studio and game as a way to get a live service game out there more quickly than starting from scratch and, much like the Bungie acquisition, didn't spend too much time looking behind the curtain. They just wanted to start bringing in revenue ASAP.
Rocco Schiavone
Member
But nobody is interested in a new Socom game. Even If a Socom II remaster/remake is on top of the Playstation Blogshare requests.
Let better burn millions of dollars for shitty games nobody asked for.
s_mirage
Member
Assuming a studio size of 150 people, and 6 years of development, would that even cover the salaries?
Moridianae
Member
24 hour peak was 241 and the precipitous drop continues as it stands only at a measly 138 at lunchtime.
I don't know if it'll reach or exceed 241 today...the decline continues.
I don't know if it'll reach or exceed 241 today...the decline continues.
Cyberpunkd
Member
Where are they based? If in Europe 50k€ is probably something like 70k€ with social payments.
150x70 = 10.5mln€ per year, but with a lot of assumptions - I don’t think all 150 people were employed for full duration, they probably got some grants, etc. Still a hefty sum.
Angry_Megalodon
Member
At early stages the project was about 50M usd. That was in the very beginning. Adding acquisition and everything else, 100-150M is a realistic figure.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
Former Bungie CEO Launches New Game Studio Development Company
After three years of operating in "stealth mode," ProbablyMonsters Inc., a new video game studio-building enterprise formed by prior Bungie (Halo, Destiny franchises) CEO Harold Ryan, has officially pulled back its curtain.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
PeteBull
Member
PlayStation® Official Site: Consoles, Games, Accessories & More
Explore the new generation PlayStation 4 and PS5 consoles - experience immersive gaming with thousands of hit games in every genre to rewrite the rules for what a PlayStation console can do.
www.firewalkstudios.com
Which means they getting those nice high western salaries in very expensive liberal state
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
It’s 5 v 5 right?
At this exact moment, there’s a max of 14 sessions happening on steam. Just wow.
At this exact moment, there’s a max of 14 sessions happening on steam. Just wow.
Cyberpunkd
Member
Fake
Member
Heads will roll again.
winjer
Gold Member
But soon it will be 0 v 0
protonion
Member
Refund everyone.
Stop the servers.
Cancel every stupid gaas project in the pipeline.
This will cost less than any other scenario.
Then,
Put Ryan and Hulst in a rocket and launch it to the sun.
Purge every woke/dei etc employee and leave no trace of wokeness in future games.
Go back to epic single player AAA games.
Stop the servers.
Cancel every stupid gaas project in the pipeline.
This will cost less than any other scenario.
Then,
Put Ryan and Hulst in a rocket and launch it to the sun.
Purge every woke/dei etc employee and leave no trace of wokeness in future games.
Go back to epic single player AAA games.
Timberwolf25
Member
WTF! Are they a Hydra or something where you cut one off and two grow in it's place. j/k
Let the studio die and repurpose/move the competent devs....all 3-4 of them.
This should serve as a cautionary tale (again) of how NOT to develop a game. Unless your intention was to go after the very niche market. If so, more power to you and keep burning that through that Sony money!
KiteGr
Member
They did go after a Niche market. They went after the fabled "modern audience"!
Fbh
Member
The $40 isn't just to make cutscenes, it's an important aspect of how the game was supposed to make money at first.
The cosmetics store from what I've seen is pretty bare bones right now, most of the skins are just basic color variants and the few that offer bigger cosmetic changes do nothing about making the characters look better and, in some cases, somehow make them look even worse (like the ones people were posting in the previous couple of pages in the thread).
If they want to transition to F2P and have a chance to make any money they need to get a new art team ASAP and start working overtime to offer more and much better looking skins.
If you want to make money as a F2P game you need characters people will like enough to get skins for...and you need skins and other cosmetics that actually look good/cool/funny
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FoxMcChief
Gold Member
Any word when the the first post launch story cutscene is supposed to release?
jubei
Neo Member
I wonder if the plan was to release with really ugly characters at launch, then charge too dollar for skins. I can imagine that conversation going like, "What does Overwatch do *wrong*? Simple. Their art is too good- Many players don't bother buying skins because the default skins look the best anyways!"
Either way, catastrophic failure.
12345666
Banned
I don't personally understand what Sony was thinking here. I'm not anything special in the brains department and even I could have told them it was a fools errand to release a $40 game into a congested market of f2p titles, especially when you aren't doing anything special to differentiate your product from the others.
Denorion
Member
If I were to guess, one developer early on the project must've pointed out how the character designs were unappealing and ugly, he/she got reported to HR for "creating a hostile work environment" and got punished.
Everyone saw it and decided to stay quiet
Fbh
Member
Nah that would be pretty insane, and if that was the case the game would have probably launched with an extensive cosmetic store with good designs.
I think the sad reality is that Firewalk (or at least the higher ups there) really thought these were compelling designs and that the game has a strong art direction
GermanZepp
Member
I just can't conceive of someone thinking that a weekly (or a monthly) cinematic was a good idea. Even with well-known characters it would raise more than one eyebrow.
ViciousAgenda
Member
52 of those vignettes a year. Can't be cheap to produce.
GermanZepp
Member
Add Druckmann to that rocket, it will have to be a big rocket tough, his ego might not fit in
CityHunter1981
Member
I think with these small numbers, the only ones still playing the game are some influencers, who were hired by Sony to promote the game.
Is it too late to pull the game and write it off, like WB did with the Batgirl movie?
Is it too late to pull the game and write it off, like WB did with the Batgirl movie?
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Bernardougf
Member
Facism
Member
Mans cutting doner there m8Great, now I want gyros for lunch.
CuckooBananaNuts
Banned
This game looks absolutely terrible in every way. The environments are so uninspired and unappealing. All the characters look ridiculous. The graphics look immensely dated. I don't understand where all the money went for this game.
FewRope
Member
Fucking insane this got a pass. The team who sold this to Sony are professional con artist, hat offs to then tbhthe game offers various type of skins so if you don't like the default one you can change them
larrybrady
Member
Right now,less ppl are playing this than helldivers,,,hell divers one that is(wich is a solid game).... Curious to know the PlayStation player count.. if you go to the PSN store,it's been rated over 8300 times,I believe you can only rate a game if you buy it first(?).. I know overall that's still a crazy low number,but at the same time it feels like a lot for this specific game
missiles
Member
Oh fuck me it gets better. That explains everything.
Jaybe
Member
Wonder if the free beta participants can leave a review, might explain why it isn’t less
SkeletonQuays
Member
That's prob the dev team desperately trying to save their sinking ship...
ManaByte
Gold Member
Yea when they announced the Firewalk purchase they sold him as the "SVP of Destiny at Activision". They REALLY buried the lead. Yes, he was a SVP, but he was over the Destiny business unit which meant he oversaw Marketing and PR at Activision, not development.