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Lets decide the biggest bomb in video game history
- Thread starter The Chairman
- Start date
Humdinger
Gold Member
The availability bias with respect to Concord makes objective assessment unlikely. We're too close to it.
I voted for ET. It's hard to top a game that required massive landfill dumps and played a role in an industry-wide crash. Yes, Concord was an expensive failure, but Sony is fine, and Corcord's failure will not do any damage to the industry (I'd argue that it will probably help it).
I voted for ET. It's hard to top a game that required massive landfill dumps and played a role in an industry-wide crash. Yes, Concord was an expensive failure, but Sony is fine, and Corcord's failure will not do any damage to the industry (I'd argue that it will probably help it).
MagnetoWasRight
Member
This makes me think people have no idea what a flop is (well, this and the posts that are defending the quality of some of the flops, which isn't the point at all.) Star Citizen doesn't need to sell a single copy after it "launches" because it's already been pre-funded. Whether or not all those people have been fleeced out of their money is another issue entirely.
diffusionx
Gold Member
I definitely wouldn't put Starfield on this list, but it sure looks like Starfield coming out of the gate like a wet fart triggered massive changes to Microsoft's plan and reliance on Xbox and GP going forward. In that context, I would be surprised if Concord doesn't have major consequences for Sony's business plans.
IAmAnAgnostic
Member
Tbh the industry was in its infancy and the game did not even bomb, certainly sold multiple digit orders of magnitude more than Concord ever will. Atari just for whatever reason overestimated the demand preemptively by massive amounts. Seems unfair to me to consider it the biggest bomb when it was just severe funds mismanagement.
Concord though entirely lost every single cent ever put to it and it was never recoverable. The money wasted includes development cost for a big studio in an expensive location, marketing, costs of acquiring studio, TV show and the situation is still not finished. Now comes either burning ever more money through the massive studio to try to salvage the product, or the money spent closing down the studio and paying severance packages.
The potential range of all of that is quite wide, but insanely high in any case. 200-500 million, depending on how much was spent on the acquisition and the TV show episodes and how much Sony will still burn.
Hence Concord is by far the biggest bomb of all time.
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Aenima
Member
Stadia.
When it comes to triple A games, i dont remember any game bombing as hard as Concord did. I had very pessimistic expectations for the game, either for player count and time untill the servers would shut down, and the game still didnt even reached my already pessimistic expectations, getting a much lower player count and shutting down the servers much faster.
When it comes to triple A games, i dont remember any game bombing as hard as Concord did. I had very pessimistic expectations for the game, either for player count and time untill the servers would shut down, and the game still didnt even reached my already pessimistic expectations, getting a much lower player count and shutting down the servers much faster.
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
Sony’s Concord.
Timberwolf25
Member
ET sold to what would be considered a great success if you compare the numbers sold to the playerbase at the time. ~1.5M sold/~4M playerbase.
As others have said, the biggest downfall was the cost of cartridge production. In a digital world, that would be a non-factor.
As others have said, the biggest downfall was the cost of cartridge production. In a digital world, that would be a non-factor.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
In terms of sales, Concord is probably by far the worst offender.
But in terms of wider impact, E.T. essentially crashed the entire industry. So I would still rank E.T. as a bigger bomb.
But in terms of wider impact, E.T. essentially crashed the entire industry. So I would still rank E.T. as a bigger bomb.
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
Either Concord or Avengers. I get the feeling Concord lost more money if the estimates in the OP are accurate.
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.
I was thinking the same thing. As in financial / commercial failure.
ET might have "crashed the industry" (it didn't, at least not on its own merits). However, Concord's revenue is now essentially $0. Even games that were in production for years and got cancelled before release (like Scalebound) wouldn't have lost as much money as Concord. On top of the financial losses, it's also done reputational damage to Sony, since it was released from a first party studio that had to apologize to the world and issue refunds mere weeks after release.
We also haven't seen the full effect of Concord's failure. We don't know exactly how it will change the business landscape of hero shooters, online only games, or games in general.
Plague Doctor
Member
Yeah, the one thing I noticed is that most people who attempt to describe the path to success for Concord coming back is to basically an entirely new and different game.
That's not saving a game. That's making a new game from the bones of a dead game. And added development cost for maybe it hitting. It would be a gamble and could not happen even within a year.
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Akuji
Member
sure but the one game is from a mega franchise, maybe at its peak the biggest in gaming, the other is a new ip.
I think Concord would have killed someone for numbers like that
FalsettoVibe
Member
Currently Concord......unless for some reason it is retooled and comes back as F2P.
Banjo64
cumsessed
Buggy Loop
Member
E.T. probably costed peanuts to make compared to games nowadays. 1.5M copies sold is surprising, I didn't know it sold that well.
Concord wins by the 1), cost of buying the studio, 2) cost of making the game over 8 years, 3) such low numbers of copies sold, 4) they're still gonna pour more money in to save it, its not over! 2nd flop incoming?
Concord wins by the 1), cost of buying the studio, 2) cost of making the game over 8 years, 3) such low numbers of copies sold, 4) they're still gonna pour more money in to save it, its not over! 2nd flop incoming?
ReyBrujo
Member
I believe this isn't the last time we will hear about it. Sony won't just say, "Meh, next project", they might probably rewrite code, they might redraw sprites, they might improve the game and might eventually relaunch. That 200m investment will return in a way or another and might probably recoup costs, who knows. In order to call something a failure one must know what happened with the game itself in 5, 10 years. That's why I put ET higher, because we effectively know they ended in a landfill. Concord? I know it's for the memes but personally I see nothing wrong in waiting to see what will happen in 10 years.
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
Yeah well I am not going down the whole which game had more expectations road as thats all subjective and I could literally then name any game I wanted as I thought it would be bigger
8 years and 200+ million for a Sony 1st party game that had a lot of veteran game devs from big name studios for 2 weeks of being alive and then shut down and refunded, these are tangible numbers
Timberwolf25
Member
In retrospect, they should've bundled the game with the console to reduce inventory. It would've given the consumer some kind of percieved value and might've sold some additional consoles as well.
Way better than polluting the landfills at the time
bundylove
Gold Member
Killed the franchise ans the studio didnt it?
I think Concord would have killed someone for numbers like that
Its not just about performance.
One could say people are still playing redfall but the studio has been shut down due to the game being a flop.
Insane Metal
Member
Too Human IMO.
Akuji
Member
what u say is correct but that is your take on it. the other guy just had another take on it.
Saying Halo Infinite flopped is not a subjective take, u need to be very fanboy defensive to say it didnt.
The amount of flop, we dont know. Took down alot of goodwill for the franchise, to just say " i cant put a number on it so it doesnt matter " is not the right way to handle these things as well.
Rudius
Member
That makes Concord's failure even worse: it's a finished, polished piece of crap.
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HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
Without a doubt Halo Infinite was a flop but it also wasn't taken offline after 2 weeks
imo Halo wasn't a ripple in the tsunami of the belly flop of Concord
balls of snow
Member
Suicide squad made a 200 million hole in wb pocket. Officially.
We need the others negative roi to gauge the magnitude of bombs here.
We need the others negative roi to gauge the magnitude of bombs here.
sainraja
Member
Sony made the call to pull the game. We don't yet know what will happen with the team and their game in the future. Easy or obvious predictions have already been made... studio is shutdown, the game isn't coming back.
If the game does come back, I hope they add something to it that makes it stand out from the crowd; because it wasn't that bad of a game, despite the design choices the team made. Some of the other things they could have easily improved upon.
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Timberwolf25
Member
I think they've at least course corrected with the change in leadership at 343.
If they release a new Halo, it won't have Bonnie Ross as the lead at 343, so I at least want to see what happens next with them.
With a new Firefight PVE mode being released, I will definitely jump back in.
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
Thats another thing about Halo they could release another game next year and with some minor tweaks it could still pull big numbers
How much would have to change for people to buy Concord 2?
343 is still around and will at least be supervising future Halo games. The game is still receiving updates and still has a revenue stream through the store.
James Sawyer Ford
Member
This poll is recency bias
Neo Blaster
Member
Concord, definitely. Pretty sure it took more than two weeks from release to burying all those E.T. cartridges in the desert.
SkylineRKR
Member
It didn't lol. The game was over stocked and sold well, but a string of bad quality software made the bubble implode. E.T. was its posterboy and straw that broke the camels back. It was a big name.
Concord lets see: Taken off shelves after 2 weeks, refunded. 0 revenue on a reportedly 100m budget. Thats quite the write off. Not to mention Sony is stuck with this studio for the time being.
LavitzSlambert
Member
To you and everyone else saying E.T., look at this:
- E.T.’s budget was $10 million, which is close to $33 million today adjusted for inflation.
- E.T. initially sold over 2 million copies, prior to the returns. By the time the returns were processed, that number dropped to around half a million.
- Concord’s budget was between $100-200 million.
- Concord sold under 50k copies and is being shut down within 2 weeks of release.
I am usually one to avoid recency bias, but there is no mistaking it - Concord is the biggest bomb in gaming history.
Akuji
Member
not the acomplishent of infinite.
concord was a giant flop, but it was a new IP that was mishandled dramaticly with funds like 20 times what it shouldve been and even then just bad decisions throughout.
But does it really matter? It was expensive for sony but they can take it. But nobody will say " damn concord was such a bad game i cant believe it " it will just be forgotten because its meaningless.
It depends how one personally defines flop for themselves. My overall vote goes to Mass Effect Andromeda after more thought on the subject.
thismeinteil
Member
As far as impact on gaming, it would be ET, since it led to a crash in the market. Of course, that wasn't actually ET's fault, cause 1.5M is great, but instead it was Atari's stupidity in ordering so many copies of the game in advance. In terms of sales, 100% has to be Babylon's Fall. 1K is pathetic.
Concord is just the most recent one, so sticks out in everyone's minds. It also helps illustrate its flop status that Sony decided to do the smart thing and not try to save it, wasting even more money, and instead pulled the plug.
Concord is just the most recent one, so sticks out in everyone's minds. It also helps illustrate its flop status that Sony decided to do the smart thing and not try to save it, wasting even more money, and instead pulled the plug.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Technically, concord's sales wont be zero.
But to show how bad the final sales will be compared to all the other games on the list which many sold millions, the final Concord sales will comprise of collectors, ebay flippers, and anyone who didnt know or forgot about refunding their digital copy.
There wont be one copy left on Earth held by a gamer to play since servers shut down tomorrow.
The game lasted two weeks. Even Babylons Fall servers lasted a year. My current toenails will last longer than Concord.
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poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Yeah its no. 1 for longest most protracted development hell but it did as well as anyone expected once it actually came out.
Plague Doctor
Member
This is where I am at. It isn't so much to defend the historic flop ET or go for the flavor of the week.
It's more that Concord actually makes ET look far less of an abject failure when you hold up the metrics of both head to head. That is a fucking feat. The clusterfuck of ET that brought down an entire sector had a performance that Sony would have killed for with Concord in sales and respective budget.
And this is a commentary not to shit on Sony specifically, but how fucked development budgets are across the industry and also how resoundingly, loudly rejected Concord was by the market. ET had more reigns in its budget and was more accepted by consumers than Concord.
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soulbait
Member
Defo not duke nukem, i played that game, wasnt great but for a fan of the genre it was mediocre/bit bad but not extremly terrible
I played it, after buying it for only $1. It was terrible and the amount of time it took to make killed any chance of Duke being relevant anymore.
PeteBull
Member
I betya if duke nukem ip got ressurected tomorrow, with all its flaws, game would still sell many times more than concord
soulbait
Member
Considering Concord should have been a F2P game, no doubt! LOLI betya if duke nukem ip got ressurected tomorrow, with all its flaws, game would still sell many times more than concord
PeteBull
Member
gunstarhero
Member
Zillion 2
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