One of Sony’s big games to launch this year was the live service title Concord. It was one of two live service games Sony launched this year. The other game being the highly successful Helldivers 2 for both PlayStation 5 and PC.
Concord had been developed by a new studio called Firewalk Studios and had a development time of 8 years along with a $100 to $400 million budget, depending on sources. Ultimately, Concord was a blink and you’ll miss it moment as the game survived less than two weeks on the market before it was pulled due to incredibly poor sales and concurrent player count.
What is pretty remarkable about Concord was that Sony saw so much potential in the new IP that they not only outright purchased the yet unproven developer, Firewalk Studios, but they believed it would become a massive franchise going up against Star Trek and Star Wars.
During a recent investors meeting, Sony acknowledged the failure of Concord but ultimately concluded that live service games were still a learning process for the company, regarding the development of said live service games. Sony also acknowledged that there should have been user testing much earlier during the development of Concord than there had been.
This isn’t the first questionable decision Sony has made in recent years. The purchase of Bungie for $3.6 billion at the beginning of 2022 is one such example where the benefits has yet to materialise. Bungie has seen numerous redundancies and restructuring as Sony grapples with what it has purchased.
Although Sony has announced that beginning 2025, there will be at least one major single player game releasing per year, it is also known that there are a number of live service games Sony will be releasing over the coming years, so while we hope there won’t be a repeat of Concord, it’s not something we are ruling out.
