Playstation 5 Console Discussion

[Cube]

I wonder if they'll do a "surprise" free to play relaunch in three months when that Secret Level TV episode comes out.

 

Although I think that episode would be kind of more fascinating if Concord is never mentioned again.

[Hero-of-Time]

Quite tempted to pick up a copy. I imagine retailers will be ordered to return all their copies. Could be a neat collectors piece.

[Dcubed]

37 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Quite tempted to pick up a copy. I imagine retailers will be ordered to return all their copies. Could be a neat collectors piece.

Stranger things have happened... Would you believe that NBA Elite 11 (a game cancelled so last minute that some PS3 copies actually reached store shelves prior to getting pulled) is the single rarest and most valuable PS3 game on the second hand market?

Honestly may be worth picking up.  As a now "cancelled" first party Sony release? It has a decent chance of being worth actual money in the future!

Worst case scenario? It'll be an interesting little piece of history for the collection shelf.

Edited 12 hours ago by Dcubed

[Hero-of-Time]

Here's a good piece from Push Square about the whole thing.

Quote

In an unprecedented move, Sony will axe Concord on 6th September, just two weeks after the high-budget first-person shooter released. This multi-million dollar blunder goes beyond disaster – it’s an absolute embarrassment, and will forever be a stain on the format holder’s record. PlayStation’s always had first-party flops, but this product was so utterly rejected by its audience and the industry at large that it gives us a glimpse into an organisation utterly out of touch. It’d also probably put PS Studios boss Hermen Hulst under the microscope – if he hadn’t already been prematurely promoted to co-CEO.

As it happens, the ex-Guerrilla managing director will probably escape most of the blame here, as ire will instead be directed at disliked executive Jim Ryan, who departed the company earlier in the year. However, Ryan would have only been responsible for signing the cheques in this excruciating incident – this was Hulst’s baby through and through.

He said as much in 2023, when PlayStation acquired developer Firewalk Studios. “We continue to be impressed by the team’s ambitions to build a modern multiplayer game that connects players in new and innovative ways,” the Dutchman wrote on the PS Blog. Concord would go on to connect players in new and innovative ways, of course – as it was met with a level of disdain and indifference on a scale we’ve never seen before. Analysts suggest the title may have sold as few as 25,000 copies, undoubtedly making it PlayStation’s biggest ever bomb. Even forgotten forays like Kill Strain lasted six or so months.

It’s worrying that Sony allowed this product to reach the market at all. There would have been focus testing and extensive analysis behind-the-scenes, and apparently no one on a six-or-seven figure salary was able to pick up on the problems. The platform holder, instead, doubled down: spare a thought for poor upcoming Amazon Prime television show Secret Levels, which has an entire episode inspired by the universe of Concord. The release will have been offline for three months by the time that airs.

Pay your respects to Haven, too, the Canadian studio behind the widely disliked Fairgame$ – another title signed by Hulst. This co-operative shooter was announced alongside Concord last year, and was criticised much harder than Firewalk’s FPS. It simply can’t reach market without an extensive post-mortem; whoever has been championing these projects internally is going to need to take a long, hard look at the direction they’re steering the company because this ain’t it.

In fact, with the exception of Helldivers 2, the firm’s whole live service push looks like it’s in tatters right now. Pulling the plug on Concord this quickly, without any rescue attempt, will have consequences. Why should you trust Sony with your money and, more importantly, your time when it axes releases so ruthlessly? Yes, this underlines just how profoundly awful the sci-fi shooter has performed, but it’s a stench that will stick to all of the firm’s future multiplayer products – especially those that have turbulent starts.

Firewalk says that it’s exploring its options, but that’s a euphemism and we’re sad to say the studio will likely be shut down. While we hate to see talented developers out of work, we don’t think the developer itself can entirely be absolved of the blame. To our knowledge it made the experience it wanted to make, and that doesn’t automatically entitle it to success.

But this game is symptomatic of wider problems within the PlayStation hierarchy. Hulst’s rapid rise to the top is giving us pause, especially when his hit rate thus far includes the acquisition of self-destructing studio Bungie and the biggest flop in PS Studios history. He, along with his advisors and subordinates, have a lot of soul searching to do over the coming days.

Sony needs a cash cow, because its single player games are costing too much and taking too long to make. The mistake it’s made is trying to force the initiative on a fanbase that’s disconnected after years of being kept in the dark. For the enthusiasts reading Push Square, Concord is more than just an uneventful hero shooter: it’s emblematic of an organisation at odds with the demands of its most committed players.

Astro Bot’s inevitable acclaim will help heal wounds this week, but the soul searching must continue behind-the-scenes: PlayStation needs to find a way to fix the frayed relationship with its fans, otherwise we don’t see this tug-of-war with its most engaged players coming to an end.

Lots of good points made by Sammy.

I do hope this disastrous failure makes the Sony bigwigs take a long hard look at where they were heading with all of this GaaS nonsense and instead get back to basics. Sammy mentions how their single player games are costing too  much to make and while this is very true, Sony could do more by releasing small versions of their main IP, just like they done with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy or Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Smaller games built using assets and engines from main games. 

They could also scale back the games they make. I mean, just look at the size and length of something like Uncharted 4 or God of War 2018 when compared to the earlier games. There was a time when I would play through previous entries of a series when a new entry was due to be released but you just can't do that anymore due to how big these games are now. This isn't just a Sony problem though but an industry wide one and it has been a costly one, with developers being laid off left and right because companies can't afford to make these huge games anymore.