Sony’s controversial live service shooter is finally out but does it have a long term future or will it quickly be mothballed? Much has been said recently, about the relative risks of making a live service game versus a more traditional video game. The logic goes that any reasonable quality single-player game has a good chance of selling well, even if it’ll never join the likes of Fortnite and Minecraft in the list of best-selling games. By comparison, only a tiny proportion of live service games ever become major hits, with most being put out to pasture only months after launch.
Unfortunately, Concord feels like it’s going to be one of the latter. Although it seems doomed to have quite a short half-life, Sony has already tasted success with live service games this year, thanks to Helldivers 2 . But that was made by an external developer, whereas Concord is by the Sony-owned Firewalk Studios.
It’s supposedly the first of 12 such games , being made by Sony’s other first party studios, although whether that plan still exists is very unclear. Helldivers 2 will have given Sony hope, but Concord faces the unfortunate reality for most live service games: launching amid complete apathy (its peak record on Steam is currently just 660 players) and so quickly forgotten it’s almost as if it never existed at all. Perhaps Concord can turn around the poor word of mouth at launch but at the moment that really doesn’t seem likely.
Concord is not a difficult game to describe and.