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Kotaku: Sony's Concord might be the biggest entertainment failure of all time, so why wasn't it news?

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Hookshot

Member
#ColinWasRight

Slam Dunk Basketball GIF by NBA


Really though, we have seen companies in the past come forward to correct false news but Sony hasn't said a word when that 400m price tag was brought up...
Maybe that's because they actually spent $600m on it and don't want to look like even bigger idiots.
 

jubei

Neo Member
The article is off base. Concord's massive failure was big news in gaming circles and it was reported thoroughly. Why Kotaku thinks CNN or other mainstream outlets are going to take away focus from corporate layoffs, war in the middle east, the presidential election in the US and other heavy hitting topics is beyond me. We are talking about a video game that even gamers didn't care about and yet the general non-gaming populace is supposed to?
Right, but then why would a movie doing poorly make national news? It's also simply entertainment, but it's treated much more seriously. The article is pointing out how gaming is treated by mainstream media as though it's niche, even though it isn't.
 

Dr. Wilkinson

Gold Member
It totally was news and was reported on and very well-known around the industry. There’s simply no question that was the case. How anyone can turn around and gaslight this, and try and claim that it wasn’t reported on is completely ridiculous.
 

Euler007

Member
What do you mean not news? I just finished a factually podcast with Jason Schreier and it was some sort of PC Master Race wankfest intermixed with Nintendo fluffing, basically Concord failing means Sony is in trouble because they only released something like two PS5 exclusives (direct quote).
 

lmimmfn

Member
It wasn't news because "Kotaku" are too woke to even investigate the situation just after release after a woke game failing.

They didn't investigate because their (and other gaming) viewpoints are hard left views and they don't want to confirm leftist woke failure.

Gaming media are absolute trash, never open links to their sites, let them die disgracefully.
 
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Perhaps Sony had told them not to? Remember when PS3 and PSV contributed around $5 billion loss for Sony and yet media would rather talked about WiiU failures despite losing only ~$350 million.

D5DwjRhUwAAs0yn.jpg:large
Yeah but Wii U selling only 10 mil in an entire lifespan is pathetic no matter how much you wanna spin it. It was a catastrophic failure. Sony has deeper pockets than Nintendo and can afford these losses to play the long game as they have several assets not just games, much like a savvy investor would have several assets like stocks, real estate, etc.
 
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Topher

Identifies as young
Right, but then why would a movie doing poorly make national news? It's also simply entertainment, but it's treated much more seriously. The article is pointing out how gaming is treated by mainstream media as though it's niche, even though it isn't.

Because movies are mainstream. Video games, not nearly as much.
 
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I just think one of the reasons (not the only reason) was that it was woke and Journalists don’t want to talk about it. So if someone makes a huge story out of it without mentioning this topic, the story would just not show the whole picture.
 

Klayzer

Member
We don't need the media to remind us of Concord's failure. We have you, and the Xfans for our daily updates. Now go back to scouring the internet for the next anti-Sony article.
 

pulicat

Member
Yeah but Wii U selling only 10 mil in an entire lifespan is pathetic no matter how much you wanna spin it. It was a catastrophic failure. Sony has deeper pockets than Nintendo and can afford these losses to play the long game as they have several assets not just games, much like a savvy investor would have several assets like stocks, real estate, etc.
Nintendo is one of the richest companies in Japan with zero debt and has the highest net cash. They could take a couple generations of failures and still not in a dire state because of DS/Wii had made so much money for them ($22 billion in profits).
 

Dr. Wilkinson

Gold Member
What do you mean not news? I just finished a factually podcast with Jason Schreier and it was some sort of PC Master Race wankfest intermixed with Nintendo fluffing, basically Concord failing means Sony is in trouble because they only released something like two PS5 exclusives (direct quote).
Did we listen to the same podcast?? Most of it was about his new book about Blizzard. 🧐
 

chakadave

Member
It totally was news and was reported on and very well-known around the industry. There’s simply no question that was the case. How anyone can turn around and gaslight this, and try and claim that it wasn’t reported on is completely ridiculous.
It should have been main stream news though. It’s a huge money laundering scheme basically and the only reason no one covered it is because of political views. They don’t want to expose why it failed so horribly. It’s better to ignore it.

Look at Star Wars Acolyte. It was 180 million and everyone was wondering where the money went. The effects and sets looked like crap.

Could we even imagine what intense would do with 509 million for a single game? It might not come out for 20 years but I’d bet it would be awesome.
 
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Dr. Wilkinson

Gold Member
It should have been main stream news though. It’s a huge money laundering scheme basically and the only reason no one covered it is because of political views. They don’t want to expose why it failed so horribly. It’s better to ignore it.

Look at Star Wars Acolyte. It was 180 million and everyone was wondering where the money went. The effects and sets looked like crap.

Could we even imagine what intense would do with 509 million for a single game? It might not come out for 20 years but I’d bet it would be awesome.
The issue wasn’t money laundering. Are you being serious?
 
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playXray

Member
I genuinely question this figure of $399 million. To break it down, let's say an average employee's salary is $60,000/year (no idea if that's right but it's somewhere to start) and the project took 5 years - this means it took 1,300 full time employees working for five years to create this. Does that sound realistic for just one game?
 

NastyPasty

Neo Member
The problem with this is that if any real journalists picked this up they'd want to verify the $400m claim because it doesn't pass a basic smell test. The fact that the likes of Kotaku run with it speaks volumes about the lack of seriousness in gaming media.

Having said that, even at a more realistic $100m it's still a disaster.
 

proandrad

Member
It totally was news and was reported on and very well-known around the industry. There’s simply no question that was the case. How anyone can turn around and gaslight this, and try and claim that it wasn’t reported on is completely ridiculous.
It was reported but a story this big had no detail investigation on it. We still don’t really know what caused the game to be in development for so long, how much money was factually spent, and why Sony didnt push more marketing for a title they thought was going to be huge. The only thing we got was gamers being called incels for not buying it.
 

Dr. Wilkinson

Gold Member
It was reported but a story this big had no detail investigation on it. We still don’t really know what caused the game to be in development for so long, how much money was factually spent, and why Sony didnt push more marketing for a title they thought was going to be huge. The only thing we got was gamers being called incels for not buying it.
Well, no because the investigations would take a super long time because the news just broke a few weeks ago. Investigations after the news breaks aren’t magically completed right as the news is breaking. that’s not how these things work.

The reason it’s not a huge new story according to what the article thinks it ought to be, is because the game wasn’t popular and so the audience about the failure of the game also won’t be that popular.

To give a modern example, Cyberpunk 2077’s de-listing from sale, after it had already gone on sale was a huge story because the game was extremely highly-anticipated, coming off of the success of the Witcher three and it was supposed to be the next big thing. And it was just shocking to millions of people.

Concord wasn’t a big brand, because it had never been a brand before, and nobody was interested in the beta in the game, and it was roundly disliked as soon it was unveiled earlier this year. It’s failure came as a surprise to approximately nobody.
 
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It was reported but a story this big had no detail investigation on it. We still don’t really know what caused the game to be in development for so long, how much money was factually spent, and why Sony didnt push more marketing for a title they thought was going to be huge. The only thing we got was gamers being called incels for not buying it.


The media doesn't investigate things they don't want you to find out. If they didn't look into pangolins that coincidentally live near max security bio-research labs, you can't expect them to unveil the hard truths about Concord's failure.
 

Dr. Wilkinson

Gold Member
The media doesn't investigate things they don't want you to find out. If they didn't look into pangolins that coincidentally live near max security bio-research labs, you can't expect them to unveil the hard truths about Concord's failure.
Oof. Reallly cringey/bad take. Definitely not a conspiracy. Doesnt even make sense. Ffs 🤦‍♂️
 

jubei

Neo Member
I genuinely question this figure of $399 million. To break it down, let's say an average employee's salary is $60,000/year (no idea if that's right but it's somewhere to start) and the project took 5 years - this means it took 1,300 full time employees working for five years to create this. Does that sound realistic for just one game?
In today's market I believe it. Average salary for a gamedev is around $100,000, but even then, keep in mind how much money goes into advertising. Marketing for big AAA games can sometimes be triple the development costs.
 
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Dr. Wilkinson

Gold Member
I genuinely question this figure of $399 million. To break it down, let's say an average employee's salary is $60,000/year (no idea if that's right but it's somewhere to start) and the project took 5 years - this means it took 1,300 full time employees working for five years to create this. Does that sound realistic for just one game?
So your entire argument is predicated on the premise that you’re not aware that there’s more cost to making games than just wages?
 
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Are sony going broke because of concord or what? Who gives a shit if cost 400m to make? Big deal. Boring ass discussion been going on for weeks. We should be focusing on how sony let such a mediocre game out at all. Why does anyone care about the financial details?
 
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Zacfoldor

Member
if you're whining about "dei", you're probably a mediocre person in lots of other ways too.
Define mediocre - of only moderate quality; not very good.

Define moderate - average in amount, intensity, quality, or degree.

Synonym for average: mean, medium, norm, standard

Sounds like you are saying normal people whine about DEI.

What quality of people don't whine about it?
 

playXray

Member
So your entire argument is predicated on the premise that you’re not aware that there’s more cost to making games than just wages?
Well no, I'm not making an argument, I'm querying the data. But seeing as you mentioned it, considering it had such a limited marketing campaign, what are the other significant costs that would bulk out the $400 million figure?
 

playXray

Member
In today's market I believe it. Average salary for a gamedev is around $100,000, but even then, keep in mind how much money goes into advertising. Marketing for big AAA games can sometimes be triple the development costs.
That's true, but did Concord have a massive marketing campaign? I saw almost nothing in the run up to release - it actually felt like it had a purposefully muted campaign, and they just wanted to get it shipped and then turn to plan B when it inevitably failed at plan A.
 
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