You know, things have gone chaotic within the game industry and community these days. I was about to make several posts; one about 2XKO, one about how a Mana fighting game works and one about PlayStation's 30th Anniversary, but I have to talk about this news piece that blew up and it's even worse somehow! Concord has died after two weeks. So here we are, ladies and gentlemen. After eight years of development, Concord has flopped real bad after its release on August 23rd and two weeks later, the game was taken offline and dead. For those of you who loved the game, be sure to show up to its funeral and bring it some flowers.
If you don't know what is going on regarding Concord's failure in performance and life, Firewalk Studios game director, Ryan Ellis has posted his article regarding the game. And it shows that the game's servers will be taken down offline on September 6th, which it did. So it's official that Concord's servers have been taken offline. This is where it stands now that Concord is no longer listed on PS5 and Steam and on retailers that sell physical copies. I'm gonna tell you what made Concord flopped real hard with 25,000 copies in sales.
The reception of its two gameplay trailers were poor that they were dislike bombed. Many people suggested that Sony and Firewalk should've delayed the game a bit to change its business model that relied on people to spend $40 on a hero shooter as other competitors are free-to-play. This wasn't the problem with Overwatch 1 because it was $60 dollars. It's clear that Sony and Firewalk should've delayed the game a bit before releasing to differentiate from Overwatch and Apex Legends. However, the majority of people that aren't interested are actually happy that Concord flopped due to the trailers' poor reception, the pricing of $40, the characters and generic maps that lacked inspiration. I was interested in getting Concord and I never played it, but personally, I'm glad I did not get it in case it flops, and it did. That has to be the biggest flop I have experienced and it's probably the worst since Sanjay and Craig.
Regarding the poor reception, Concord's characters became ugly and bland and the cast became a Guardians of the Galaxy mimicry. The shooting is great, but the gameplay is slow. And the game was sold for $40. That's why nobody didn't want this game unless if it was free-to-play. But Ellis has clarified that the game will be taken offline while exploring options to better reach players. This is not the only bad news that came to fruition.
In exchange, the death of Concord comes with a new release, Astro Bot, which received a 92 and a Must Play accolade on Metacritic and an outstanding reception, thus being a universally acclaimed game over Concord. So it makes it clear that on September 6th, an utterly disappointing game like Concord was shut down in favor of an utterly outstanding game like Astro Bot was released in exchange. It is the fact that both of Concord's trailers got dislike bombed over the game's lukewarm Guardians of the Galaxy mimicry of characters, inspiration lacking maps, the bland gameplay and the $40 pricing while Astro Bot's trailer received an overwhelming amount of positivity over the game's ultimate PlayStation experience accompanied by VIP bots that dress up as our favorite PlayStation characters and it's in time for PlayStation's 30th Anniversary. I have a post about PlayStation 1's 30th Anniversary coming soon, so stay tuned for that.
Again, Ellis has made it clear that Concord will be offline while they explore other options to better reach more players. Does this mean that we will never see Concord again and is it deemed dead? Absolutely not. It will return in a later date potentially as a free-to-play title and will remain on Prime Video's upcoming anthology series, Secret Level. This is not common of the situation today and it's largely dominated by Blizzard with their free-to-play entry of Overwatch 2. To have a free-to-play hero shooter is a very smart business choice as everyone can play it without their paid membership on console and the chances of a free-to-play hero shooter to flop are very slim.
In fact, if I recall correctly, there has been one free-to-play hero shooter that has been ported to console and has not flopped, and that is Valorant, which did a great reception since the console launch. The only upcoming free-to-play hero shooter coming to consoles this year is Marvel Rivals. There is literally one free-to-play team-based game that Concord will have to compete with if it returns as a free-to-play title.
One last thing to be made. The main reason of hero shooter games to be free-to-play is a train that they have a slim chance of flopping and an excellent chance of doing pretty well. If the game goes free-to-play, it will very likely succeed to have a good player base. To give a hero shooter a pricing makes no sense. They need to be free-to-play so that they can succeed to have a skyrocketing player base. So it's possible that Concord may return as a free-to-play title as Ellis stated that they would take the game offline to explore better options to reach more players. But when? The answer is unknown.
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