You think a mere eight years online wasn't long enough?

[PeregrineFalcon]

Concord Shutting Down 14 Days After Launch

 

Online shooter Concord is shutting down its servers on September 6 and will not be playable after that as its developers “explore” other options for the sci-fi shooter released last month on PS5 and PC. The game struggled to find an audience - never cracking over 1,000 concurrent players on Steam - and quickly became a flop that was also derided by many critics and fans.

 

Costing $200 million, Concord sold only about 25,000 copies. It needed to sell around 5 million copies in order to break even just from initial sales, but I guess that there was an in game store that would have made a ton of money over the years. I'm guessing because, like all of you, I didn't buy Concord. Clearly nobody did.

 

14 days. The game will be online for only 14 days. I almost feel sorry for the 73 people who liked the game and I just can't imagine what caused Sony to so arrogantly misjudge what the market wanted.

 

[Lunar Ronin]

When your biggest competitor (in this case, Overwatch 2), is free-to-play, buy-to-play is just not going to work at all in this day and age.

[PeregrineFalcon]

I'd read that this game was in development for 8 years. It looks like it launched 2 years too late.

[SeraphimKensai]

It also doesn't help much that I've literally never heard of it until this post and I'm a pretty avid gamer with hundreds of games in my steam catalog. Was their advertising budget $19.95?

Edited September 3 by SeraphimKensai

[High_Beam]

Never heard of it but regardless of weather it was good or bad, you have to feel for the devs.  I mean at least they delivered unlike some promised games out there.

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 hour ago, High_Beam said:

Never heard of it but regardless of weather it was good or bad, you have to feel for the devs.  I mean at least they delivered unlike some promised games out there.

I don't know if "Hey, at least we're not Star Citizen!" is much of a selling point.  😁

[SeraphimKensai]

22 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I don't know if "Hey, at least we're not Star Citizen!" is much of a selling point.  😁

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2. Its been in my wishlist since 2019 and still not out yet. Perhaps one day, as they changed developers and publishers a while back (I'm in their discord wondering when the hell it's going to get finished).

[Skyhawke]

12 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2. Its been in my wishlist since 2019 and still not out yet. Perhaps one day, as they changed developers and publishers a while back (I'm in their discord wondering when the hell it's going to get finished).

 

Same. It got pushed back to 2025 for "polish". As for Concord, Games As a Service can die in fire for all eternity, as far as I'm concerned. 

[PeregrineFalcon]

23 minutes ago, Skyhawke said:

Same. It got pushed back to 2025 for "polish". As for Concord, Games As a Service can die in fire for all eternity, as far as I'm concerned. 

Isn't "games as a service" basically just an MMO without calling it an MMO?

[High_Beam]

1 hour ago, Skyhawke said:

Games As a Service can die in fire for all eternity, as far as I'm concerned. 

I feel the same way about SaaS.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

15 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Isn't "games as a service" basically just an MMO without calling it an MMO?

I would characterize it as wanting MMO-money without putting in MMO effort.

[Techwright]

Never heard of it, and I've viewed 3720 titles according to Steam, including a host of titles that at one point were "coming soon".  Judging from similar comments, that's part of their problem, I think.  Which is weird because I've lost count as to how many low-budget-for-advertising indie games have been pushed before me. 

 

Anthem can breath a little easier now, with such a contender taking the heat for short durations.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

[looks up briefly from PUBG Mobile]

...nope, never heard of it.

 

It's a crowded market these days, and the only one that piqued my attention briefly was SW: Hunters. 

It's decent, the mobile port's pretty good, and it had a quite serious marketing spend behind it (as well as being connected with that IP).

Oh, and it's free, with the usual paw out for Battle Passes and skins and such.

 

But none of the characters really suited my playstyle, and some of the jokier elements don't really land. 

Not a complete load of bantha poddu by any means but not my cup of blue milk.

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

15 hours ago, Techwright said:

Anthem can breath a little easier now, with such a contender taking the heat for short durations.

I'm not sure how Anthem's going to breathe easier. Weren't the Anthem servers shut down in 2021?

[Krimson]

I've heard of Anthem. Who makes a $200m game without an advertising budget?

[Techwright]

3 hours ago, Krimson said:

I've heard of Anthem. Who makes a $200m game without an advertising budget?

I suppose the question is whether there was an abused advertising budget.

 

Firefall (game not band) was on track to eventually be a successful game back in 2011 and was having an extended beta test.  However, much of the budget was diverted for ridiculous things like an expensive custom bus and role players in very professional costumes (including John Cena).  All supposedly as advertising techniques, but it was 1- well beyond the advertising budget, 2- dipping heavily into the development budget, and without a completed game.  I do admit the beta was, from 2011 to 2013 pretty awesome, but only had a handful of zones, and some zones had been shut down for retooling.  This advertising fiasco destroyed the company, the game was sold, then slowly destroyed.   Just an example, but Concord may have had similar failures.

[PeregrineFalcon]

While I hadn't heard of Concord until a month or two ago, and it launched less than two weeks ago, it was clear from the chatter that many others already knew about it. I suppose it's possible that the youngsters are talking about these things in places that older people, such as myself, don't frequent.

 

I suspect that someone at Sony looked at Concord, realized that it wasn't going to do well, and deliberately decided to save money by not advertising it. If that's the case then they obviously made the right call.