Concord Staff Says Game Was Referred To As “The Future of PlayStation”

Concord is one of Sony’s biggest mistakes in game development, with the game being pulled offline and refunded just two weeks after it launched. Concord aimed to be the premium in a sea of free-to-play hero shooters. However, the numbers weren’t there, and it received a 1.8 Metacritic User score. In a recent Sacred Symbols podcast episode, Colin Moriarty mentioned that they had spoken to one of the staff members who worked on Concord at Firewalk Studios and spoke “extensively for a long time” about Concord and its situation.

The whole situation was doomed from the start, with the game being overhyped internally and referred to as “the future of PlayStation.” That statement could be correct to some degree, but would more so imply the future of PlayStation is going downhill along with Concord. The game was so hyped up within the studio and at PlayStation, that there was a dev culture of “toxic positivity,” which didn’t allow for any negative feedback to be given at any point.

While it was estimated at a much lower number, Concord cost about $400 million to make, leaving Sony a pretty hefty void after the game failed to perform as expected. Concord was in development for a couple of years, reaching an Alpha state in late 2023. At that point, Sony didn’t even own Firewalk Studios, but they had been working alongside them to create this title since 2020 or 2021. Moriarty mentions that before it had even reached the Alpha state, they had already spent at least $200 million on developing the game, which is a huge amount of money to sink into something that isn’t even close to being released to the public. Moriarty mentions that it’s uncertain how much of that money came from the original studio that was developing Concord and how much of it came from Sony.

Between the Alpha period and the game’s release, Sony spent another $200 million on Concord. According to the employee who spoke to Moriarty, by the time the game was showcased to a public audience, it was in a “laughable state,” and it looked so terrible that Sony felt they had to spend more money to make the product viable. By the end of the first quarter of 2023, the game was still incredibly unfinished, so Sony paid a significant sum of money and outsourced the game to other studios to try and put the product together.

Once the game was released, Sony made just about $1 million in gross revenue but then refunded everything. This is one of Sony’s biggest losses on the market, with games such as The Last of Us Part 2 and Spider-Man costing less than Concord but being significantly more successful.

Sony so heavily championed Concord that it was considered a “Star Wars-like” project for them and would be successful on a grand scale. It was also seen as Hermen Hulst’s “baby.”