Tomorrow marks the official release of Concord, PlayStation’s new hero shooter made by Firewalk games, reportedly in development in some form or another for the last eight years. Not coincidentally when Overwatch first launched.
The game was showed off in full earlier this summer, and it attempts to mix up traditional hero shooter gameplay with some elements ported from Destiny 2 (it has a number of Destiny PvP designers working on it), a different design aesthetic and for better or worse, a different price model.
Now, on the eve of launch everyone seems to be bracing for the game to do poorly. Very poorly, as suggested by early data. It is a day and date PC release alongside PlayStation, and the game recently had a free open beta. The concurrent high on Steam was just 2,388 players with significant drops as the weekend went on, and even if PlayStation is ten times that, that’s still terrible. Even more so because this beta was free, and the final release is $40. It is rare I have seen the failure of a game predicted so forcefully ahead of time. Probably not since Suicide Squad, and we all know how that went.
With this price, PlayStation is attempting to mirror what they did with Helldivers 2, which also was $40 at launch for a live multiplayer game. But here, Concord is diving into a different PvP market where essentially every major competitor is free-to-play. Concord believes they can “earn” that cost by not having paid characters or battle passes, but it’s a tall order. The vast majority of free-to-play gamers pay nothing, with that difference made up by fewer players who can often spend a lot. Here, you are demanding every player pay $40 up front in a genre where that is simply not a thing. While I too yearn for the age of gaming where you just paid up front and didn’t have to pay more to stay current, the 2024 market does not feel conducive to that.
The game itself? Well, that’s a mixed bag. Some people really liked the combat in the beta and want more. Others believe it’s too slow or doesn’t make enough of an impression. The overall idea is that you really have to stand out in the live shooter space now with audiences content to keep playing Fortnite, Roblox and Warzone for the next decade.
Concord does not seem like it will stand out enough in terms of gameplay, but above all else the previews of its characters have been poorly received. There’s been some culture war stuff about its different ages and body types rather than all video game-traditional hot people, and listing their pronouns on the select screen, but it’s more just…the aesthetic is not great. It’s pulling from ‘70s sci-fi to appeal to an audience that was not born for another 30-40 years and past that, the vibe feels too “we have Guardians of the Galaxy at home.”
I think a game like Concord could have survived any one of these issues individually, but put them altogether and add in the data we already know, and yes, it’s understandable why most are simply bracing for impact in terms of how this is going to launch.
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