Concord's Seemingly Unlimited Promo Budget Now Includes Animated Shorts

If we extrapolate the beta numbers to the official release, then genuinely this might be one of the biggest Sony gaming bombs they’ve put out in a while. Returnal didn’t sell amazing but Sony didn’t own Housemarq at that time and the budget shouldn’t have been that huge. Sackboy and Destruction All Stars didn’t sell great either but those were obviously lower budget. Concord getting all this promotion + weekly cinematics + recurring development spend due to its live service nature, it has to cost a pretty penny. Microtransactions cant help this game if it doesn’t have an audience in the first place. Maybe when reviews drop things will pick up steam, but at this rate I don’t see how this isn’t a financial disaster like Suicide Squad was.

Wow that sucked.

As a Sony Sad-Dad fan, Sony GaaS failures are more of a positive to me than a negative. 🍻

@Deoxyr1bose Sony only acquired them 15 months ago so the majority of the game had already been done and funded by then so it won't be too much of a financial hit to Sony's own resources but if the game flops and Sony decide to shut them down then it becomes a huge financial hit as that would be the acquisition price wasted.

I am quite intrigued to find out how much Sony paid for this studio considering it's their first game, unfortunately theres no info online.

I'm sure we will never know the true extent of the money wasted on this generic garbo, however it's pretty clear at this point that this is a flop.

Once the youtubers/streamers get done using it for mockery content and inflating the few thousand players on release it will be even more clear the redfall/suicide squad level disaster this is to be.

Biggest bomb of the year incoming, what a waste of resources.

@BeerIsAwesome and i still do . the big solo cinematic games can sit out a lil longer

The animated short actually is decent, I like the character interactions. They should have released it and other shorts like it in the previous months, people may have grown more invested in the lore, setting and characters.

Now? It may be too late.

Launching this directly on plus might have given it a sizable audience, but it looks like it's going to bomb.

I think I'm more interested in the game's promos and trailers than the actual game.

@DonJorginho Basically the only good coming from this is that there are devs being paid a wage. Waste of resources is one way of looking at it, the other is that these devs have to put food on the table and they’d rather work on this than be shuttered like their pals in other Sony studios.

I think the animation looks pretty good. But it doesn't say much about the three characters personality outside they're a good team.

@Deoxyr1bose Based on Insomniac leaks, Returnal sold 1 mill copies and Sackboy sold 1.3 mill copies. Both games also received positive reviews. Considering Sony acquired Housemarque not long after the game passed 500K copies and right now they're making a new IP, i can say Returnal is a success for Sony & Housemarque. The same can be said for Sackboy. I think one of the reason why Sony put some good marketing for Astro Bot is because Sackboy did well.

@colonelkilgore absolutely my thoughts as well

@BeerIsAwesome Whose we? I think PS owners were quite happy with the big open world and cinematic games as well as stuff like Bloodborne and Returnal.

Sunk cost fallacy i guess?

I wish the game itself had more of this cel-shaded art direction. It makes the characters look less bland.

Wonder why Jim ran away and hid 🫠

Stop trying to make Concord happen

Concord is not gonna happen

I do think this art style works better for the game...but I'm still not interested in the world or characters.

@Ravix You can imagine him writing:

"blimey
resign in early 2024?"

in his Notes app while watching early gameplay footage

These should have really been released ages ago, like, way before the beta. Overwatch showed that if cinematics are done well they can help add hype for a game.

But i think they've left it too late.

I'm more excited to watch more of these shorts than playing the game 😕

Concord's going to flop harder than a Boeing 737 with no wings.

@BeerIsAwesome And we're still waiting.

I don't get this at all... There are two narratives to this game now?
Why do we not have SOCOM and Killzone instead? People actually want those.

Man, wished Sony tried this hard on marketing with Puppeteer, Resistance, Gravity Rush, Patapon, Sly Cooper, Infamous, Returnal Medieval, PS Vita, and much more.

Individually they probably would have sold about 10x more than Concord besides 2x more with this budget.

They really want us to like these characters huh? As someone who genuinely liked the beta I will say I do agree with the sentiment that the majority of the characters aren't very likeable. I only really liked 3 out of the 16 which isn't a great ratio. Jabali, Haymar, and Star Child were cool. The rest were a bit on the generic side.

Still, I'm rooting for the game. It's got an uphill battle for sure.

This is a waste of money, the game will launch, fail, and will be shutdown between 6 to 12 month. Just cancel this and fire all the development team, especially the art style team, fire them harder.

ps+ within 6 months

@Anke This pregnancy test works differently: not pregnant, redhead, greenhead

@Spanky Actually. Gravity Rush has a beautiful anime called GR: Overture and Sony hired Studio Khara, the studio behind Neon Genesis Evangelion movies, to do it. The anime is canon and bridge the first and second game and it also free to watch by everyone. I bought GR 2 limited edition that came with an extra bluray disc for Overture.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tFeXtu-3u78&pp=ygUSZ3Jhdml0eSBydXNoIGFuaW1l

Sony also made two live action ads for GR 1 and 2. But sadly the majority of gamers just doesn't care.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7tFkBX1-Hr8&pp=ygUgZ3Jhdml0eSBydXNoIGxpdmUgYWN0aW9uIHRyYWlsZXI%3D
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tgky0MmxSqk&pp=ygUgZ3Jhdml0eSBydXNoIGxpdmUgYWN0aW9uIHRyYWlsZXI%3D

The same can be said for Resistance. Sony actually did a lot of marketing for the games. I think each Resistance game except Retribution and Burning Skies has live action ads like this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tgky0MmxSqk&pp=ygUgZ3Jhdml0eSBydXNoIGxpdmUgYWN0aW9uIHRyYWlsZXI%3D
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R4iMYXT75DM&pp=ygUeUmVzaXN0YW5jZSBsaXZlIGFjdGlvbiB0cmFpbGVy

@Frmknst For one thing, because Naughty Dog don't want to focus on supporting one game. They prefer making several single player games.

At least the controller actually looks nice! also Astrobot most definately needs a special controller as I think that would sell more then concord just saying.....

It's weird how the animation makes it look like an interesting story based co-op shooter a bit like Borderlands without the annoying juvenile humour.

It's crazy to me that one person (Jim Ryan... I suppose it's not quite that simple, but it did seem like he was championing the sudden switch to mass GaaS development) was able to steer a multi billion corporation down the sh@tter, going all in and chasing a fad that's been wrung dry a long time ago whilst completely disregarding the whole customer base their success and foundations were built on. I guess the lesson here should be to never listen to any radical ideas from a person in a position of power as they approach the end of their tenure.

@Old-Red To be fair there was a lot of doom and gloom surrounding Helldivers 2 before release. People saying we don't want these kind of games, it was going to bomb etc...
Turns out most of the customer base don't visit/comment on sites such as these.
Helldivers is a success, foamstars a flop, concord looking like another flop. But if marathon or fairgames also finds success then playstation will probably consider this gaas experiment a success.

Wow, PSVR2 didn't have half the marketing budget xD

@Llamageddon difference with helldivers was their was a neutral feel from the audience that blew up once the game came out. People have tried this, not been into it gameplay and god do the characters and writing suck.

@BeerIsAwesome No one asked for more live service games. If anything the popular sentiment has been very much against with a few noteworthy exceptions. The only people asking for this were corporate execs.

Also, ripping off Overwatch isn't really doing something different.

@RagnarLothbrok I agree which is why I stated that concord will more than likely be a flop. More looking at the wider gaas experiment where they only need a couple of projects to succeed to make it worthwhile.
Personally I've no interest in gaas, mmo or multiplayer in general but I am aware that the community on pushsquare is not representative of the larger gaming community (in particular casuals who prefer to spend all their time with a handful of games)

@nessisonett I try to think about it in a positive light, but I can't help but fear layoffs will soon follow, I hope they get another chance to work on something truly unique though as there are elements within Concord which are good.

@BeerIsAwesome Glennthefrog already touched on it, but my comment has less to do with the quality of Concord. I'm just not willing to call Sony copying Blizzard and Disney-Marvel's homework something different.

Phil Spencer: We bought Arcane Austin, and we're gong to have Redfall be the biggest service game this generation this side of Suicide Squad!

Jim Ryan: ....Hold my beer.

@InfidelFrigidstraigh LOL I posted the exact same thing and then saw you beat me to it!

@Anke That actually would fit with the faux Starlord motif!

@somnambulance Forspoken at least can get a second life in the bargain bin for long tail sales on multiplatforms and fine a small niche audience as a cult game. A service game doesn't get that option.

@BeerIsAwesome Bloodborne sold well especially for its time where From had yet to explode. It was never a getting a sequel, Sekiro and no doubt Elden Ring also won't get sequels as well that's bar the course for From as even Dark Souls is done. From has talked about a Bloodborne remake for PS6 though.

@BeerIsAwesome How are Horizon and Ark anywhere near the same? Have you even played either?

@BeerIsAwesome I mean the point is PS players were happy with what Sony was doing last gen 1st party wise. No one was really asking for Sony to change course, the people moaning about the exclusives Sony makes were usually the people who couldn't actually play them because they were either Xbox players or PC players. No one wanted a generic hero shooter from Sony especially when there's endless F2P ones out there.

@BeerIsAwesome No I understood what you said, I just don't agree with your premise. And your 'sarcastic list' doesn't mean anything when most of the games you used as examples aren't remotely comparable to each other outside of superficial similarities.

Sony used to publish a much wider and diverse library of games. This got reduced significantly in the PS4 era when budgets started to inflate on big blockbuster games in order to keep up with the ever growing rise in graphical fidelity and industry trends. Japan Studio got dissolved in 2021 my dude, and they were responsible for some of the most unique games available across all generations since the PS1. When people say they want 'something different' they typically mean (typically smaller budget) titles that have their own creative identity given time to shine in the long wait times between the next trillion dollar adventure game. They make these kinds of games periodically, there's just MUCH less of them now.
So no, Sony making a big budget live service Overwatch clone is not 'something different'. It's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect them to do nowadays.

@BeerIsAwesome I don't take moaning online seriously dude. Gamers complain about everything we're famous for that.

@BeerIsAwesome Okay I think you're either not getting my point or willfully ignoring it to win a semantics argument.
The reason you brought this up in the first place is to imply that people who want Sony to make something different are lying or at least ignorantly obstinate because they don't accept their Overwatch clone.
It's not even an implication anymore, you said it yourself a couple of replies back.

I'm saying that's BS. We can want a more diverse library from Sony and simultaneously reject cynical slop when it's brought to the table.

@colonelkilgore tbf gamers moaning online probably make up about 5% of gamers

@Toot1st then congrats, welcome to the 5% 🤷‍♂️

@colonelkilgore

Yeap, I hope their main focus continues to be 3rd person cinematic action/adventures. No one in the industry make them as good as PS.

@colonelkilgore thanks. the massive majority of gamers are your cod fortnite and annual spots game players they dont sign up to game site comment sections

@Toot1st yup and that’s not even counting mobile gamers, the number of which dwarf the filthy-casuals you alluded to.

@BeerIsAwesome Those were both very anti-consumer moves with one outright putting gambling in a SW game kids will play. No where near the same over complaining on what games Sony makes or doesn't make.