Kotaku: Concord budget was $200M which did not include marketing, the sale of IP rights or the acquisition of the studio

John Elden Ring

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Firewalk Studios is shutting down, PlayStation co-CEO, Hermen Hulst, announced in a press release on Tuesday. The team was responsible for Concord, the company’s sci-fi hero shooter that bombed so badly it was taken offline just weeks after its launch earlier this year. The news comes less than two years after the PlayStation 5 maker first acquired Firewalk Studios as part of its ambitions plans for live service gaming.
 
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TrishaCat

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That's still quite high, but that's a good ways lower than the $500 million that was floating around for a while.
 

Gediminas

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That's still quite high, but that's a good ways lower than the $500 million that was floating around for a while.
it was 400M. but look, there is no delay costs, also, no marketing cost, which also can cost 10s of millions.

anyways, 200M is bonkers, it is completely wasted money on this turd. somebody in that company clearly skimmed the money :D
 

Evilnemesis8

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@John Elden Ring

Higher than 200M:

The initial development deal for the game was just over $200 million, according to two sources familiar with the agreement but who were not authorized to speak publicly about it. But Kotaku understands that amount was not enough to cover the game’s entire development and did not include the purchase of Concord IP rights or Firewalk Studios itself, which Sony acquired only last year.

Probably one internal delay plus the possibility that the COVID boom probably inflated the salaries of new hires in 2020-2021(remember Concord is in Bellevue Washignton which is in the Greater Seattle game dev area).
Competition and Venture Capital money was flowing at the time.

Possible that game actual final cost(only dev) was probably like 250~(+- 25M)

What marketing? Lmao

Obviously the marketing was probably reduced in scope, that's what happens when internal reviews/pre-orders near the launch tells them that the product is not going to do well but there was still marketing costs for the game.
 
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quest4441

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That did not include marketing, the sale of IP rights, the acquisition of the studio, or game's delayed launch.

Bruh I bet in delusion of making "Star Wars" of Sony the idiots paid a premium for this worthless IP's rights and also paid premium on 3rd party contractors to rush this turd out.
 
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Danja

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@John Elden Ring

Higher than 200M:



Probably one internal delay plus the possibility that the COVID boom probably inflated the salaries of new hires in 2020-2021(remember Concord is in Bellevue Washignton which is in the Greater Seattle game dev area).
Competition and Venture Capital money was flowing at the time.

Possible that game actual final cost(only dev) was probably like 250~(+- 25M)



Obviously the marketing was probably reduced in scope, that's what happens when internal reviews/pre-orders near the launch tells them that the product is not going to do well but there was still marketing costs for the game.
Sure of course but marketing was extremely light
 

Evilnemesis8

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Sure of course but marketing was extremely light

"Light" can still be something like 50M for marketing. I know people go "yeah I spoke to some friends and nobody knew this existed" in movies/games.But that's normal for cheaper marketing campaigns.
Only the 100-150M marketing campaigns for games/movies truly reach everyone, although you'll still have plenty of people that are still clueless a thing exist, just less of them.
 

shrike0fth0rns

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200 million too much.
200mil is the new normal. Most of that is the cost of labor. If a dev team is based in markets like Washington state or California it’s hard to keep cost down. Hard to build teams in more rural states like Bend because ppl don’t want to move to work there and lots of devs don’t want to work in conservative places like the south. This is why some publishers don’t mind remote work or pursuing building teams in Europe especially Northern and Eastern Europe. Ppl make a big deal about Japanese publishers giving rases recently but their pay was crap to begin with compared to devs in the states. Even with the increase Japan dev salaries are still well below what a well qualified dev can make in a market like California. Responsible use of AI tools could shave of 10s of millions in development cost and help return game development cost to something a bit more sustainable.
 

Yurinka

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Having spent $200M on it, obviously separated from the acquisition of the studio(which obviously included the IP) makes way more sense than the nonsensical $400M.

Around $200M, or a bit more, is on par with these kind of AAA games released nowadays. Remember that last gen games, which were pretty huge, like TLOU2 or HFW already did cost more.
 

Gods&Monsters

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This must be the initial 200 millions for Probably Monsters that was reported, not the actual budget of Concord.

Sony did not act like it was the next big thing at all.
 

Bryank75

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200mil is the new normal. Most of that is the cost of labor. If a dev team is based in markets like Washington state or California it’s hard to keep cost down. Hard to build teams in more rural states like Bend because ppl don’t want to move to work there and lots of devs don’t want to work in conservative places like the south. This is why some publishers don’t mind remote work or pursuing building teams in Europe especially Northern and Eastern Europe. Ppl make a big deal about Japanese publishers giving rases recently but their pay was crap to begin with compared to devs in the states. Even with the increase Japan dev salaries are still well below what a well qualified dev can make in a market like California. Responsible use of AI tools could shave of 10s of millions in development cost and help return game development cost to something a bit more sustainable.
I just mean that it should have never been greenlit.

Waste of time and money completely.

They could make a few Stellar Blades for that amount.
 

quest4441

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I maintain the fact these people get paid too much, Heck nearly all of the people in the western game industry are not even graduates of Tier 1 Universities. In japan and korea we get graduates from Tokyo university and Seoul National University work for Nintendo, Square, Krafton, NCsoft etc. In the states losers from 2 bit colleges get hired on inflated pay packages to deliver turds.