• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Is Concord headed to be Sony's biggest first party flop ever?

I don't know where you go with studios like these. They were built up with a design by committee mindset so they're already set up for failure. The director was probably a director in name only. You don't have proper leadership.

There's probably plenty of talented folk there. Let them support other studios.

They released a very well polished game in I think 6 years. That to me is a team you keep around no matter what. Even Xbox is showing us that's very hard to come across. Sure this game was a flop but give them a new SP IP to try or help other studios and I think they do some great work. Maybe have them revive an old IP of Sony that people keep talking about SOCOM or something.
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Would be a shame to outright cut them

I still think at a minimum they would provide great value as a GaaS support studio to Bungie
I don’t disagree. But at that point, there’s bound to be some redundancy, and major cuts will be done. I think it sucks how cutthroat the entertainment industry is.
 

clarky

Gold Member
You want to say Concord is a mess on a technical level?

Even DF praised is for the level of polish and how good the performance is.

That's why Sony bought them, not because of Concord per se.
LMFAO, so they knew Concord was shit but sony thought "hey these guys are a wizz and that programming and polish lark and might be able to help us out in the future? Lets buy them quick before anyone does" give me a break.

I'll have what some of you guys are smoking.

Game and studio are a dud. We all make mistakes.
 
Last edited:
LMFAO, so they knew Concord was shit but sony thought "hey these guys are a wizz and that programming and polish lark and might be able to help us out in the future?" give me a break.

I'll have what some of you guys are smoking.

Game and studio are a dud. We all make mistakes.

Concord isn’t shit

It’s just not commercial success

Why is this so hard for you to understand?
 

Killjoy-NL

Member
LMFAO, so they knew Concord was shit but sony thought "hey these guys are a wizz and that programming and polish lark and might be able to help us out in the future?" give me a break.

I'll have what some of you guys are smoking.

Game and studio are a dud. We all make mistakes.
Are you going to deny that the quality of Concord on a technical level is outstanding?
 
It will have a knock on effect on other Sony gaas ventures I can tell you that. Look at Ubisoft cancelling their gaas shooters because Hypnoscape? Hyperscape? failed at launch among others.
They've just released XDefiant (she/her) as well, which seems to be doing better with over 1 million unique players.

Concord (they/them) has a lot of competition coming up, which will only compound matters.
 
They released a very well polished game in I think 6 years. That to me is a team you keep around no matter what. Even Xbox is showing us that's very hard to come across. Sure this game was a flop but give them a new SP IP to try or help other studios and I think they do some great work. Maybe have them revive an old IP of Sony that people keep talking about SOCOM or something.

Sure it was polished, but I don't see a studio with creatives that can helm their own single player game. The best idea they could come up with was a guardians of the galaxy rip off and writing that looked like they just put a marvel script into chagpt and told it to write something similar.

Agree with helping other studios though. You don't throw away talent. I despise this industry for that
 
Last edited:

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Sure it was polished, but I don't see a studio with creatives that can helm their own single player game. The best idea they could come up with was a guardians of the galaxy rip off and writing that looked like they just put a marvel script into chagpt and told it to write something similar.
Hey, don’t blame m…… ChatGPT got this sucking!
 
I just wonder how much money Sony has to squander for bad PlayStation products and games? Concord, Destruction All Stars, Foam Stars, PSVR, PSVR 2, PS Vita, Portal...
huh? Foam Stars was not developed by them. At most they didn't get their money back from the marketing campaign they spent on it and having it on PS Plus. Destruction All Stars was a small game developed by an external studio. PSVR was such a big flop that they literally released VR2. And Portal is a hit and surpassed their expectations.

What are you talking about? lmao

If any of this was a flop Helldivers 2 alone covered those costs dude.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
They are only wrong to buy the studio if it doesn’t provide any positive value over 10+ years.

You don’t buy a studio and then judge it on the first game they release. If that’s what they end up doing, it’s stupid short term thinking
Yeah I’m sure in 2021 Sony bought this studio thinking “the game they’re working on right now, and that won’t release for 3 years, will probably flop horribly and lose tens of millions or more. But it’s not fair to judge them for that… their next game might actually be a success!!”

Biggest load of copium horse shit I have read about this game so far. Please tell me you’re trolling and you don’t believe what you just wrote.
 
Yeah I’m sure in 2021 Sony bought this studio thinking “the game they’re working on right now, and that won’t release for 3 years, will probably flop horribly and lose tens of millions or more. But it’s not fair to judge them for that… their next game might actually be a success!!”

Biggest load of copium horse shit I have read about this game so far. Please tell me you’re trolling and you don’t believe what you just wrote.

They probably didn’t HOPE it would flop, but it was certainly a possibility. Sony isn’t dumb, they know how fickle the GaaS space is

Go cry somewhere else over a basic business decision with all sorts of probabilities baked in
 
Last edited:

Killjoy-NL

Member
Nope I even said as much in the other beta thread on first impressions.

Whats your point?
My point is pretty clear.

That's why Sony bought them.
Same as how Sony bought Guerrilla Games for their potential, while Killzone 1 had a very divisive reception and got a lot of flack for being a boring shit corridor-shooter.
 
Last edited:

GymWolf

Gold Member
Wish I could see inside firewalk studio. A cemetery probably has a more positive atmosphere right now
It's gonna be the opposite of this

concord-concord-ps5.gif
 

clarky

Gold Member
It’s got great mechanics and fantastic performance. Its not mid at all, its just not novel enough to pull anyone from current GaaS titles
It complete fails at what it sets out to do. No join in progress , horribly imbalanced, non existent map design, terrible art direction, terrible reward system, no penalties for quitters.

If one of your only good points is that it runs as intended then you know the game is in trouble.
 
Yeah I’m sure in 2021 Sony bought this studio thinking “the game they’re working on right now, and that won’t release for 3 years, will probably flop horribly and lose tens of millions or more. But it’s not fair to judge them for that… their next game might actually be a success!!”

Biggest load of copium horse shit I have read about this game so far. Please tell me you’re trolling and you don’t believe what you just wrote.
He spent a lot of energy and time hyping up Concord to "counterbalance" the negative impressions. He has a severe case of Sunken Cost Compium-itis.
 

Perrott

Member
It will have a knock on effect on other Sony gaas ventures I can tell you that. Look at Ubisoft cancelling their gaas shooters because Hypnoscape? Hyperscape? failed at launch among others.
Not really. The moment Sony decided to greenlight around a dozen live-service titles (pre-Bungie acquisition) across a variety of genres and IP, they made their financial projections for the whole GaaS initiative knowing that not all the shots from this shotgun blast would hit or even become the next big thing - they only needed a handful of their live-service titles to really stick to the wall for the whole bet to pay off.

And so far, the success of Helldivers II and the heights to which the IP has been elevated to have more than paid the bills for the cancellation of The Last Of Us Online, Twisted Metal, Firesprite's action shooter new IP and Deviation's game (all of which they wrote-off from their taxes), the failure on all levels of Firewall Ultra and the upcoming flop of Concord.

There are still Fairgame$, Marathon, Horizon: Hunters Gathering, Bend's new IP, Jason Blundell's new IP and Destiny 3 on the horizon, all of which, at least on paper, have some potential to be more of the hits that Sony is after.
 

clarky

Gold Member
My point is pretty clear.

That's why Sony bought them.
Same as how Sony bought Guerrilla Games for their potential, while Killzone 1 had a very divisive reception and got a lot of flack for being a boring shit corridor-shooter.
You think they bought studio for their technical ability and not the IP they where working on at the time?

Because if that was the case they need to fire 90% of the studio immediately.

MS should be able to easily offload Ninja Theory to Sony on this news.
 
Last edited:

Killjoy-NL

Member
You think they bought studio for their technical ability and not the IP they where working on at the time?

Because if that was the case they need to sack 90% of the studio immediately.
Read what I've said before. At no point did I say the game had nothing to do with it.

But you dont buy a studio just because of a game they make. At least, I wouldn't, unless the studio itself shows a lot of potential.
 
Last edited:
It complete fails at what it sets out to do. No join in progress , horribly imbalanced, non existent map design, terrible art direction, terrible reward system, no penalties for quitters.

If one of your only good points is that it runs as intended then you know the game is in trouble.

These are all exaggerated

I think the art direction is not bad, just the characters

It’s not horribly unbalanced, map design seems pretty standard

Plenty of other highly successful GaaS titles have similar “flaws”, no game is perfect
 

clarky

Gold Member
Are you going to deny that the quality of Concord on a technical level is outstanding?

Nope I even said as much in the other beta thread on first impressions.

Whats your point?

My point is pretty clear.

That's why Sony bought them.
Same as how Sony bought Guerrilla Games for their potential, while Killzone 1 had a very divisive reception and got a lot of flack for being a boring shit corridor-shooter.

Read what I've said before. At no point did I say the game had nothing to do with it.

But you dont buy a studio just because of a game they make. At least, I wouldn't, unless the studio itself shows a lot of potential.
I must be easily confused because you said exactly that to me.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
For the record, I still don't think it looks that terrible. I just have literally zero interest in FPS PvP with no campaign. Even with the woke characters, they could have at least tried to make a campaign similar to a worse Farscape or something and not rip off Guardians of the Galaxy as much as they did.

The biggest issue is that the game just seems mediocre in an oversaturated market. From the initial trailer, I was expecting more references to 70s sci-fi in the art design, but it's just not there.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member

Are you surprised?

This is also from one of the dudes working on the game (the character designer i think)


This is an over simplification. The sentiment being expressed is that whites must acknowledge their privileged position, and then actively work for equality. It will be hard and confronting work, but if we don't we're complicit. And complicity allows systemic racism to persist."


Sony is fucked if every studio they have turned into a woke asylum.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Honestly, the gleeful burying of games is so immature and tacky, doubly so when its driven by culture war bullshit.

Couldn't give a toss about this game personally, but I'm getting pretty tired of militant ideologues on power-trips to hurt any game they perceive to be on the "wrong" side of culture and politics.
"Wrong" of course inevitably being the one opposite of the audience they are pandering to.
 
Sure it was polished, but I don't see a studio with creatives that can helm their own single player game. The best idea they could come up with was a guardians of the galaxy rip off and writing that looked like they just put a marvel script into chagpt and told it to write something similar.

Agree with helping other studios though. You don't throw away talent. I despise this industry for that

Reading more on this studio you might be right about the creatives. Maybe if they can get a good lead to control all the nonsense I think that would be good enough. You can have the whiners crying in their cubicles about DEI but as long as they work and the lead shuts all that shit down when it comes to actual game you can produce quality software.
 
Last edited:

nial

Gold Member
Firewalk always came off to me as some cheap asset sold to Sony by ProbablyMonsters, and they most likely didn't even own the IP, either (we have no way to know since Concord was announced after they were acquired).
I don't think that they should be shuttered, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens relatively soon. That, or them getting absorbed by Bungie.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
You think this isn’t widespread across the industry?

This isn’t a Sony problem. It’s literally everywhere

Especially teams located in California
Well...the last 3 sony (or sony adiacent) games i played are hd2 that has zero woke in it, stellar blade that has zero woke in it, and spiderman 2 that was the wokest game i ever played in my life so it seems like not every sony game suffer from this.

Right now i'm playing outcast new beginning and i only encountered a single woke line of dialogue after 10 hours, and it's an alien world so it even hit differently.

So no, not everyone is infected by the woke virus, even horizon 2 and ragnarock are nowhere near the level of wokeness of spidey 2, so even between the "woke" studios there is a differentiation.

I can survive with some throw away woke elements in ragnarock, but i can't deal with another sp2 situation.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom