Sure but at $50m, that's 8 times smaller than the production cost of Concord.
As a multiplatform title being sold at mid-price, especially with the GamePass buy-in, its done pretty good. But if it had come out just on Playstation would it be perceived as such a success? I really don't think so.
Now, its not to say that wouldn't have made a decent profit. But, here's the thing: Just because this time everything worked out, it doesn't mean to say that it would work out everytime. Which is a big problem if its part of a slate of product, because suddenly this one moderate win suddenly has to underwrite all the losses incurred from the others that didn't do nearly so well.
Its like placing a handful of small bets versus making one big one. The former means that you need to be really unlucky to lose on every one, but your chance of making major gains -which you need to fund the next round of bets- is much less likely.
Its why Embracer was always going to be a fucking disaster, but that's another story.
I'm not defending the GAAS strategy on any grounds other than its earning potential. A really successful game of that type is a fucking money machine! Personally - zero interest. BUT its not hard to see why investing in that sort of product is appealing to a publicly-traded company.
Big bet, potentially big loss but also chance of massive gains.
GAAS or PSVR2 the impulse is the same: Expand the market because we're hitting the limits based on production cycle and cost for a market that's been stagnant in terms of size and potential income for well over a decade.
The ugly truth is that the only thing keeping the market growing in recent years has been GAAS. So it is objectively the logical choice as an area for exploration/exploitation.
Which explains Concord - which if the "modern audience" actually existed could have been a great success! However...
Look: Bottom is at no point is great success on a project guaranteed. So magnitude of success matters.
What boggles my mind is the way people are acting like no Sony first-party title should or could ever fail! Hence had they spent their GAAS budget on a bunch of standard products they'd be sure to do better. Especially considering that they aren't just a publisher, they are a platform holder and so are looking to the wider ecosystem -third parties included- to fill their coffers.
Like I wrote earlier, from a business standpoint its the right move, even if I personally have no interest in it. And its really not going well outside of Helldivers 2.
The only issue I have is people acting like there's been a shortage of games to play as a result of the GAAS initiative. I disagree, and my backlog is actually bigger than ever and there are exclusives I remain looking forward to on Playstation while my Xbox continues to gather dust in the corner.