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[Draugoth]

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If you look at the Probably Monsters website, you will see that they have released nothing as of October, 13th, 2024. The most they have done is incubate a team and a property which was then promptly sold off. They state that they still have 2 teams working on Triple-A fare alongside other incubation teams, but this makes me question how much of that 250 million dollars in Series A funding was used on Concord and Firewalk. This next statement is also conjecture but makes me believe that one of the main courses of action Probably Monsters needed to take to remain afloat was to sell Firewalk and Concord to Sony.


Outside of this, all I can do is chop up some numbers and present them. Hypothesis time! Let’s just say in the past year, 1,972 professionals were actively working on Concord throughout SIE, Firewalk, and the outsourcing teams. Each of these professionals makes roughly $90,000 per year on average. Doing some really basic math the number comes out to one hundred seventy-seven million, four hundred eighty thousand dollars ($177,480,000). This number would be around how much money Sony drained into merely the workforce that worked on Concord for just one year. This cost is just for the workforce; it wouldn’t include the cost of marketing, purchasing the team, and the IP.


The key takeaway is that nothing is too big to fail. Injecting copious amounts of cash and manpower into a game may be to the detriment of creating good, unique ideas. Something I learned from researching this game is the idea of toxic positivity. Sometimes, the heads of these companies are so stubborn and set in their path that they end up blinded by their imaginary world. Not wanting to listen to people internally or even glance at what the opposition is doing is a recipe for failure.


I want to make it clear that the information I’m presenting is from my own research. However, through my research, I am determining that Concord‘s budget did end up somewhere close to the proposed 400 million dollar number, if not exceeding it. But I implore you, the reader to be a free thinker, and research for yourself to come to your own conclusion!

 

[adamsapple]

Colin ..... redeemed ?

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Colin ..... redeemed ?

what is wrong with you?

he is always right.

 

[PandaOk]

James Sawyer Ford gotta repost that talk now lol

 

[Guardian Monkey]

Colin ..... redeemed ?

Or renamed.

 

[Saber]

That would explain why they are not willing to give up on this turd.

 

[rm082e]

They're going to do more damage to the PlayStation brand by relaunching this thing than it will ultimately be worth. There's never going to be a turn around for Concord like No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

please, please re-lunch this game as F2P just to see the massive rejection for a second time.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

It could even have been $500 million!

 

[StreetsofBeige]

That would explain why they are not willing to give up on this turd.

They're going to do more damage to the PlayStation brand by relaunching this thing than it will ultimately be worth. There's never going to be a turn around for Concord like No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk.

You'd think they'd cut the cord. Nope.

Sony has a lot more money than you think. A week ago, they peeled out $400M just to buy out Pink Floyd songs.

Check out the Sony company rows in the chart in the link. Over $2B spent in 2024 alone.

Pink Floyd Sells Music Rights to Sony for $400 Million

Despite decades of infighting and years of false starts, the members of Pink Floyd have agreed to sell music rights to Sony Music for $400 million

au.variety.com

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

$600 million, even!

 

[Fake]

Thats explain why Sony is not want to quit yet from this trash game.


Loads of money they sure want to try a second time before kicking this game into a coffin.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Who knows, perhaps even $700 million according to my research!


But another "let's dunk on Concord" thread? Priceless.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

it's going to be 600 million next month.

I'm a prophet.

 

[begotten]

Colin Moriarty already did a follow-up and some detective work that was better presented and more convincing than this slop write-up.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Thats explain why Sony is not want to quit yet from this trash game.


Loads of money they sure want to try a second time before kicking this game into a coffin.

Might as well give it one more kick of the can. All the big money spent already is done.

So if they can spend a bit more money on a F2P game with a skeleton crew manning the e-store (they probably already got a lot of this shit already done but never released), skip out on any expensive CGI vignettes not made yet, and maybe if it catches on it could eek out millions in mtx fees or battle passes.

At this point, the risk reward is like playing poker.

A guy starts with $1,000. He lost $970 already. He's got enough money left for a sandwich and an uber ride home.

But nope, if youre already down $970, but risking that last $30 might end up with $100 winning a final pot, might as well go all in. The most you can lose is another $30.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

 

[RodriGames40]

"Budget flop" someone said on the other thread. Hilarious.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

please, please re-lunch this game as F2P just to see the massive rejection for a second time.

Gives flashbacks of Sony re-releasing Morbius because of the memes, only to see it bomb twice.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

It could even have been $500 million!

$600 million, even!

you think you're funny, but let's not forget that Sony has spent closer to $5 billion on the GaaS initiative. They probably wish they could take a hit for just $600 million instead

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

IMMEDIATE flaw in their method:

>Assumes all 1,972 people accredited to the game worked on it full-time for the whole year.​

This is obviously not the case. Some of those people probably only worked on it for half a year, others maybe a month. Without knowing the specific people or their duration of time spent working on the title, you can't gauge how much it would've realistically costed. Ironically their napkin math for this (~ $177 million) also only assumes these people worked on the game for a single year, because that's how salaries work...they're stated in annual terms.

Now, they could have been averaging this out over a 4-6 year period and maybe also remembered that the game didn't enter full production (including outsourcing) until later on. But, I strongly doubt they did, so at this point I'm making up excuses to cover what they didn't consider.

This person also brings up the amount ProbablyMonsters raised prior to selling to SIE. When most of us are talking about the costs for Concord, it's usually in relation to figuring how much money SIE lost on the game. The $250 million raised by PM before being acquired is money SIE have no involvement with. It's just lost money for those funders, end of story. Which means if the $400 million is even close to being true, SIE "only" lost $150 million, not $400 million.

I put "lost" in quotes because these people don't seem to have heard of the term "tax write-off". It's also possible some portion of Concord's development might've been subsidized by state tax breaks, but I'm only saying that because it's something we've seen with Hollywood films & shows (for example, The Acolyte).

Look, I think Concord is a joke and its catastrophic failure to launch can't be ignored or downplayed. It was a massive bomb for SIE, plain and simple. However, we don't need to make up random numbers to attach an arbitrary price to that failure. Knowing it failed is enough, especially when many of these numbers are being pulled out of proverbial ass cracks.

 

[SlimySnake]

1,972 professionals were actively working on Concord throughout SIE, Firewalk, and the outsourcing teams. Each of these professionals makes roughly $90,000 per year on average. Doing some really basic math the number comes out to one hundred seventy-seven million, four hundred eighty thousand dollars ($177,480,000).

This is dumb. 2,000 people did not actively work on this game. its a fucking pvp shooter.

 

[Killer8]

Really basic math guesses like this never take into account facts like fluctuating team sizes. Teams can operate for years with just a few dozen people and then bloat up to hundreds for the last couple of years of full production. Some people might contribute as little as a few months of billable work to the project via an outsource company. Other people you see in the credits, which is where i'll assume that 1972 figure is coming from, are there for basically symbolic reasons. Did Jim Ryan and Scruffy the janitor do $90,000 of work for Concord? No they did not.

I think Concord bombed as much as the next person but this is dumb mental masturbation.

 

[Giallo Corsa]

They're going to do more damage to the PlayStation brand by relaunching this thing than it will ultimately be worth. There's never going to be a turn around for Concord like No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk.

They could
...if they turned all those ghastly characters into slender anime waifus

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

dumb mental masturbation.

... it's really hard bro.

 

[Sharius]

really hope they relaunch this game as F2P so i can enjoy its flop again, also to shut down people that tried to shift the blame, they tried to swing the flop for game price rather than a wokeness

 

[ReyBrujo]

Give it a few months and it will have costed as much as a third world country external debt.

 

[nial]

Who?

 

[DarkstarRising13]

Beyond embarrassing Sony is wasting time trying to fix this game. WTF!? You already fired the man who pushed the company to greenlight GAAS slop mostly due to Microsoft buying out companies like Activision and Bethesda. With him ousted, anyone with a brain should realize that most of the GAAS slop are woke, DEI-infested piles of crap like Concord and Fairgame$ which will bomb immensely upon release. It's best to give up and go back to what you do best: single-player games.

Sell Bungie and see if you can get any money out of the billions you paid for them, write Concord and all GAAS in production as a tax write-off, and fire and cut off ties with developer studios that make this slop no one will play such as Haven Studios and Firewalk Studios.

 

[MarkMe2525]

Speculation with incomplete information. "Hypothesis time" doesn't inspire confidence. Could be true, could not be true. This article doesn't get us closer to what the truth is.

 

[PendekarRajawali]

Please stop this Concord thing, we're gonna run out of jokes about the game.

 

[Buggy Loop]

There’s more threads about concord than peak concurrent users it ever got

 

[Zacfoldor]

Told yall. Rich cities man. No end to costs, truly no end. 25 dollars for parking bro.

 

[Spitfire098]

Research....lol bro just took the number of employees and multiplied a made up yearly salary.

 

[Hawk The Slayer]

Even if it cost 40 million, it would have still been a major flop and well deserved too.

 

[Topher]

"according to Lords of Gaming Research"

 

[Javi97]

It is also possible that the majority of Sony's debt is also part of the Concord budget

"Total debt on the balance sheet as of June 2024 : $25.93 Billion USD. According to Sony's latest financial reports the company's total debt is $25.93 Billion USD. A company's total debt is the sum of all current and non-current debts"

 

[mckmas8808]

It could even have been $500 million!

I believe it cost $1 Billion to make. My research led me to think this.

 

[havoc00]

Concord bros we are still relevant, redemption arc in 2025 baby

 

[AW_CL]

"according to Lords of Gaming Research"

These two individuals are the owners of Lords of Gaming.

 

[tmlDan]

who tf is lords of gaming, lets be serious here people, stop this nonsense.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

I believe it cost $1 Billion to make. My research led me to think this.

Possibly more

 

[Topher]

These two individuals are the owners of Lords of Gaming.

I like Lord Incognito. He and Mattyp do a great job on their podcast. Had no idea this was his site. This is pure cringe though. Probably need to reign in this Subeg Dhaliwal fellow. Outside of some cheap clicks, this ain't doing the site any favors.

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

$400 million? I can't believe they spent $500 million on that game! Why would they spend $600 million on it?

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

 

[schaft0620]

Concord has 1,972 credited staff and one of the founders of Kinda Funny's wives worked on the game. Colin knows.

I think the point is, the first company was irresponsible with the money, spent the $250m and needed Sony to bail them out. Which is how you get to (around) $400m.

 

[thismeinteil]

 

[DarkstarRising13]

Concord has 1,972 credited staff and one of the founders of Kinda Funny's wives worked on the game. Colin knows.

I think the point is, the first company was irresponsible with the money, spent the $250m and needed Sony to bail them out. Which is how you get to (around) $400m.

If that were the case, WTF was Sony thinking pouring $150 million into this garbage? If I were an upper management at Sony and saw that the developers were incompetent talentless hacks who couldn't get anything done with the time they were given, I would immediately call a meeting and tell my fellow managers that we should cut ties with them and announce we are no longer in a partnership with them. Would have saved Sony the embarrassment they would have received in August.

 

[FoxMcChief]

Concord has 1,972 credited staff and one of the founders of Kinda Funny's wives worked on the game. Colin knows.

I think the point is, the first company was irresponsible with the money, spent the $250m and needed Sony to bail them out. Which is how you get to (around) $400m.

Yup.

 

[CLW]