Concord Registers Only 1100 players during first Day of Closed Beta (Steam) | 2210 Players at Open Beta

[ToTTenTranz]

Game will be free with ps+ essential next month

Maybe not next month, but if it doesn't lift off after release it's going into plus essential pretty soon, yes.

Which is a massive problem for Sony, considering the level of investment they had planned for this game.

Remember they were planning to give players new adventures with CGI cinematics every single week, meaning they've probably been blowing up money at those cinematics for a while.

 

[GachaMadeMeBroke]

Curious to see what numbers the open beta pulls in. Never expected the closed beta to do all that well, the game never managed to really pull an audience in. Next week is gonna be the game’s final chance to woo people

 

[Johnic]

They don’t understand that single player games aren’t keeping the lights on at SIE

Before you know it they are gonna be forced to either cut back on production.

A single player game that sells 10 million, and most Sony games do at least that, is far better at "keeping the lights on" than a several year-long project that dies in 6 months and only sells a few million at best.

And yes, cutting production cost is what they should be doing. Stop hiring famous actors, stop making every game an open world and stop making every game 50 hours long. Go back to smaller games. That's what the entire industry needs to do.

 

[Airbus]

@Ico something about me loosing the culture war again or something like that i suppose

 

[Vertigo]

@Ico something about me loosing the culture war again or something like that i suppose

First Descendant didn’t have great beta numbers. Concord should also be given such benefit of doubt considering you actually need to buy it when it’s actually released. This isn’t early access (right?).

But… it’s not tracking on top sellers or upcoming games on steam. Not looking good going into launch.

Will be interesting to see what happens. I’m def in the “fuck this game” camp and gonna try the Valorant beta again.

 

[SSfox]

So they killed Japan Studio for this?

Sony got lucky they got the Hoyoverse triplets. Those are gonna help a lot to minimize the bleeding occuring by trashcans gaas like Concords and Destruction

Now they need to be very careful on what gaas games to invest in the future. Even if we haven't see anything about Factions 2 but I can bet this would have been miles away superior than this

 

[Johnic]

Now they need to be very careful on what gaas games to invest in the future. Even if we haven't see anything about Factions 2 but I can bet this would have been miles away superior than this

100%. An established franchise with an already successful MP mode (Factions is still populated today) would have done much better than whatever this is. But hey, Factions wouldn't have made the same money as Fortnite, which is what all of them are after.

 

[Kokoloko]

So they killed Japan Studio for this?

My granpa died a few years ago. That was also because of Concord…
What has Japan Studio closing got to do this studio? I love Japan Studio, but I don't see the connection

 

[Vertigo]

Factions was planned as pve narrative drive co-op game like Destiny. Stupid expensive to make and no studio has successfully made a modern console game like it. Bungie burns thru stupid amounts of cash to sustain it with content. Those that have tried were flash in the pan pathetic imitations that die in a month.

You’ll get better returns on these strictly PvP games ideally. This is where Marathon will offer a complete different plan for operations than a Destiny for Bungie itself.

Then again, Concord plans to dump money and resources into episodic cinematic content … like why? It’s a PvP game. Makes no sense and sorta defeats the purpose.

I have my concerns now on the long term viability and burn rate thru cash.

You can call it a GaaS but these games don’t actually go into service phase unless they can succeed at launch.

Worst case scenario, Firewalk becomes a bungie support studio anyway and guys like Josh Hamrick go work for their old boss again. In fact, I think all these studios working on live service games should all be published and produced by Bungie and branded separate from PlayStation … but we ain’t there yet. Bungie can barely sustain one game.

 

[Kokoloko]

100%. An established franchise with an already successful MP mode (Factions is still populated today) would have done much better than whatever this is. But hey, Factions wouldn't have made the same money as Fortnite, which is what all of them are after.

They should of kept Factions, but they are different genres

 

[Vertigo]

They should of kept Factions, but they are different genres

I’m not a ND fan but what they said was really enlightening and admirable. If they planned making Factions like Destiny it would’ve consumed their entire studio production, if not needing a number of support studios on board to help meet forever growing and unreasonable player wants.

Bungie didn’t have to change the studio they were to make Destiny. Destiny is the same exact game as Halo with all its parts blended as one. A platform for infinite halo sequels you could say (lols). They didn’t have to reinvent themselves into an online game studio. Bungie is the reason Xbox and Xbox Live exist. A fact.

Bungie’s value is its experience in making these games. It’s history needing to work with support studios and managing the growth of these games and its hard times as well. Naughty Dog can look at this and see how it can also go terribly wrong with what happened to BioWare when they tried to change who they were…

Like I said… I admire the call. I think they made the right move to can it.

 

[Kokoloko]

Man you know whats worse than woke culture. Cancel Culture.

It’s just as lame as the woke lot ganging up trying to get something they don't like canceled.
Cheering for something to fail because you don't like the look of it, or because its an online MP game lol, kinda sad and pathetic.

Yall haven't even played the game, but you have so many important opinions….you are bad as the shill reviewers, fans and media that try to kill a game before its even out.

Sony is gonna make MP games regardless if this fails. So your victory, doesn't mean anything.

 

[Vertigo]

Sony has always tried releasing mp and online games. Plenty have failed. They should always keep trying. Way better than more f***ing Marvel and Star Wars.

It’s like people forget EverQuest and Socom didn’t exist.

PlayStation existed before Uncharted

 

[Kokoloko]

I’m not a ND fan but what they said was really enlightening and admirable. If they planned making Factions like Destiny it would’ve consumed their entire studio production, if not needing a number of support studios on board to help meet forever growing and unreasonable player wants.

I call it really bad management. Either Sony, ND or both.

Another reason to show that game producers dont always know what the are doing and neither those upper heads.

Neither Sony or ND could predict the staff they needed for an MP service game….? When they are many MP games and studios out there showing what numbers are needed? Lame. If I did this during a 4 year project, Id get the sack.

Sony should of expanded them to be able to work on both when they came up with the idea that they want to make more MP games. Factions 2 sounded amazing with the PVE and story elements

 

[Vertigo]

I call it really bad management. Either Sony, ND or both.

Another reason to show that game producers dont always know what the are doing and neither those upper heads.

Neither Sony or ND could predict the staff they needed for an MP service game….? When they are many MP games and studios out there showing what numbers are needed? Lame. If I did this during a 4 year project, Id get the sack.

Sony should of expanded them to be able to work on both when they came up with the idea that they want to make more MP games.

I do/don’t blame Sony. My gut is telling me that ND had to keep increasing the scope of the game as development moved forward. Also, the love service review board kind did what you ask… and reevaluated what was needed. This was the result.

I’d love to hear the real story some day but I guess we’ll have to wait until their next game comes out for those details.

A new game entering this space is going to have a hard time keeping up with contemporaries that have been maturing for 10 years and keep evolving.

What’s needed to launch a new game and compete may require much more than what those games needed 10 years ago. Cue Helldivers … doing something completely different and winning big.

Wild times. Looking forward to it.

 

[Johnic]

Neither Sony or ND could predict the staff they needed for an MP service game….? When they are many MP games and studios out there showing what numbers are needed? Lame. If I did this during a 4 year project, Id get the sack.

This is seriously incredible. How do you work on a project for 4 years, to only then realize you wouldn't be able to support it? That's a huge management issue. These things should be ironed out in pre-production and then amended as the project changes. But how do you get completely caught off guard after 4 whole years?

 

[Kokoloko]

This is seriously incredible. How do you work on a project for 4 years, to only then realize you wouldn't be able to support it? That's a huge management issue. These things should be ironed out in pre-production and then amended as the project changes. But how do you get completely caught off guard after 4 whole years?

Jim and Hermen and the other upper heads are to be blamed for it, Id say. Either for not planning properly, or letting ND there own planning. Either way they are responsible for it as chiefs.

Personally, you give one of your best studios what they need to do whatever the fuck they want. ND literally put PS3 and Sony back at the top, id give them whatever there vision is needed.

Factions 2 sounded kind of towards the end of production, the problem was how to carry it on after release. They should of just expanded them to whatever they needed. Sony has the money to do it, they should of

 

[Yurinka]

Regardless 1100 peak is very bad

Do you have numbers or another Steam closed beta limited to preorders of a paid game to compare?

 

[Yurinka]

Which is a massive problem for Sony, considering the level of investment they had planned for this game.

Source for the level of investment? What is the budget?

Remember they were planning to give players new adventures with CGI cinematics every single week, meaning they've probably been blowing up money at those cinematics for a while.

They ARE planning. Nothing leads to think they'll stop it.

Their AAA SP games have a few hours of cinematics too. The difference here is that they split it in short videos of a handful minutes to be shown every week.

Pretty likely they already have made the cinematics for the first year or so. If the game works beyond that, they'll make the ones for the 2nd year and so on. And if not, they can stop making them, saving the money of future ones.

This is one of the positive things of GaaS, that they don't have the spent the whole money when the game is released, so they can fine tune the amount of post-launch development budget depending on performance, increasing or decreasing it as needed.

If the game would flop they'd reduce it to the minimum or drop it, saving a lot of money than in a non-GaaS title they'd have spent before launch. If the game would perform better than expected (like Helldivers 2) then they'd increase their post launch plans.

 

[Yurinka]

So they killed Japan Studio for this?

They didn't kill Japan Studio, they just restructured, rebranded and split them as Team Asobi and XDEV Japan.

They're the ones behind Death Stranding Director's Cut, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin, Astro Bot, Convallaria, Lost Soul Aside, Death Stranding 2 or Physint.

This is seriously incredible. How do you work on a project for 4 years, to only then realize you wouldn't be able to support it? That's a huge management issue. These things should be ironed out in pre-production and then amended as the project changes. But how do you get completely caught off guard after 4 whole years?

They didn't say that weren't able to support it.

Game projects and the market evolve during development, and almost always they are very different when close to release than when in preproduction. Quite often, the scope of the project also grows a lot during development. Even in the top teams, with the best and most experienced management, there are frequently delays and ran out of budget.

Not because of bad management, but because to make games is not like to work in a factory. It's a creative process where it's very difficult to predict how the market will be in 5 years. Even less -like in this case- where the team makes a type of project quite different than the one they are experienced on.

In this case they saw that support it accordingly after launch was going to take some resources that they wanted to spend on the multiple SP games they also have in the works. They grew to work on minimum 3 big new projects at the same time, and maybe could grow more for a while. So decided to kill the GaaS title and focus on SP games, where the team is more experienced now that they saw they had the GaaS side better covered with other titles (GT, MLB, Helldivers, Destiny etc).