Sony confirms Three Seasons currently planned for Concord | Pre Load Available

[Yurinka]

Im guessing the seasons are free updates too?
Worst come, at least we get a year of content with the game lol

Yes, seasons are free upgrades. In the PS blog they say "seasonal updates that will introduce new characters, new maps and worlds, new modes, new stories, new features, and more" and "From the very beginning, we wanted Concord to be a complete experience, where all core content is available to you on day-one and moving forward—not gated behind paid expansions or a Battle Pass. We take your investment in the game seriously and want to ensure that we bring all players along for the journey."

 

[Kokoloko]

Yes, seasons are free upgrades. In the PS blog they say "seasonal updates that will introduce new characters, new maps and worlds, new modes, new stories, new features, and more" and "From the very beginning, we wanted Concord to be a complete experience, where all core content is available to you on day-one and moving forward—not gated behind paid expansions or a Battle Pass. We take your investment in the game seriously and want to ensure that we bring all players along for the journey."

Nice.
Lol does that technically make it not “gaas”?

 

[ethomaz]

Nice.
Lol does that technically make it not “gaas”?

Not sure... they didn't share what will be sold as GAAS yet but the expectations are only cosmetics from what the said.
It is more a Live Service game that you pay like traditional games than GAAS.

 

[Orangee]

It's funny how all of you guys are preaching for this game to fail horribly, yet It takes one whale who will spend thousand of dollars on concord microtransactions, making the game automaticaly profitable lol

It's the same with the shitty gacha games, there's always that one guy who will buy It all.

 

[quest4441]

It's funny how all of you guys are preaching for this game to fail horribly, yet It takes one whale who will spend thousand of dollars on concord microtransactions, making the game automaticaly profitable lol

It's the same with the shitty gacha games, there's always that one guy who will buy It all.

I agree but who will whale on these characters lol, The people who whale the most are coomers and the geniuses at firewalk in their infinite wisdom antagonized them.

 

[Yurinka]

Im guessing the seasons are free updates too?
Worst come, at least we get a year of content with the game lol

Yes, seasons are free upgrades. In the PS blog they say "seasonal updates that will introduce new characters, new maps and worlds, new modes, new stories, new features, and more" and "From the very beginning, we wanted Concord to be a complete experience, where all core content is available to you on day-one and moving forward—not gated behind paid expansions or a Battle Pass. We take your investment in the game seriously and want to ensure that we bring all players along for the journey."

Other than that, their post-game acquisition monetization seems that it's going to focus only on cosmetics: "With season 1, we’ll also be introducing an in-game store for those looking to personalize their Freegunners further with additional customization items and to continue to support the game. These will supplement the hundreds of rewards earnable through progression and will be solely cosmetic, optional, and have no gameplay impact."

 

[Yurinka]

They should be able to break even in this game but not much more.

Let's say with game sale and microtransactions, after removing taxes, server costs per player, store costs like currency conversion chargebacks etc. they make an average of $50/user.

Let's say they spent $150M for the launch + 3 first seasons content, and additional post launch support would depend on game performance.

In that case they'd need to sell 3 million units to break even. I think they will achieve that in 2024, and even if they spent $300M on it (I highly doubt it), so needing 6M copies, it would be profitable too.

 

[Dick Jones]

Let's say with game sale and microtransactions, after removing taxes, server costs per player, etc. they make an average of $50/user.

Let's say they spent $150M for the launch + 3 first seasons content, and additional post launch support would depend on game performance.

In that case they'd need to sell 3 million units to break even. I think they will achieve that in 2024.

The game is 40. Better off to use the base cost for worse case scenario sales needed.

 

[Orangee]

I agree but who will whale on these characters lol, The people who whale the most are coomers and the geniuses at firewalk in their infinite wisdom antagonized them.

Someone with strange fetishes. World is big and there are a lot of strange people out there, man.

 

[Kokoloko]

Let's say with game sale and microtransactions, after removing taxes, server costs per player, etc. they make an average of $50/user.

Let's say they spent $150M for the launch + 3 first seasons content, and additional post launch support would depend on game performance.

In that case they'd need to sell 3 million units to break even. I think they will achieve that in 2024.

Currently I dont even seeing it selling like Returnal, which was less than a million during its first year?
Obviously I would like them to do more.

I think 0.5-1Million would be a moral victory at this point, that would be equivalent to David vs Goliath lol

 

[ethomaz]

Currently I dont even seeing it selling like Returnal, which was less than a million during its first year?
Obviously I would like them to do more.

I think 0.5-1Million would be a moral victory at this point, that would be equivalent to David vs Goliath lol

See will lose some users here due heart attacks if the game sells 1 million.

 

[Yurinka]

Nice.
Lol does that technically make it not “gaas”?

Nah, it's a GaaS. Game as a service is when a game it's designed to have a (hopefully long, multi year depending on performance) post launch support evolving the project.

That post launch support includes server monitoring and maintenance and -as long as budget and game performance allows it- fixes, tweaks, rebalances, new content and features.

Let's say GaaS are the games that evolve and expand after launch.

Other than that, there's a gazillion possible ways to monetize them. Which over time can also change for a specific game. There's the typical case of a paid game that after having recouped the investment of shipping the game and having good enough performance and monetization moves to be a F2P to get a playerbase bump.

Currently I dont even seeing it selling like Returnal, which was less than a million during its first year?
Obviously I would like them to do more.

I think 0.5-1Million would be a moral victory at this point, that would be equivalent to David vs Goliath lol

The 560K sales data we had from Returnal was from July 2021 and the game was released in April 30 2021, so it barely only was first month sales.

Returnal was a PS5 only release and as of March 2021, the PS5 install base was 7.8M (sell-in). So these were great sales for a niche game.

As of June 30, the install base of PS5 was 61.7M (sell-in). Will be bigger at the end of August, and Concord will also release day one on PC.

The game is 40. Better off to use the base cost for worse case scenario sales needed.

Successful F2P games have an average ARPU of around $50 or so.

I assume Sony's idea of launching their games like Helldivers 2 or Concord at $40 is to only need a minimum monetization other than the one from getting the game to have successful GaaS.

This allows them to focus more in traditional non-GaaS gameplay and progress, and have a more relaxed monetization than in the case of a F2P where games need to be more aggresive with monetization to become profitable.

Doing the Sony approach, after the game gets profitable and over time keeps building a good enough amount of monetization options (in this case having added enough cosmetics to the store, and maybe adding something else new in the future as could be small single player campaign episodes) to the point that the ARPU only counting addons is big enough to continue paying the game's support, they may decide to make it F2P or discount it to bump the playerbase.

 

[Kokoloko]

See will lose some users here due heart attacks if the game sells 1 million.

I think heads would explode lol. I dont see it happening though. I see them having Returnal year 1 level sales at best.
But would be great for PS and Firewalk, game deserves it

 

[Kokoloko]

Game as a service is when a game it's designed to have a (hopefully long, multi year depending on performance) post launch support evolving the project.

I see.
Just Make TLOU Factions 2 happen.
Multi year content of ND story telling and gameplay in TLOU world. New dream game that will never happen, that almost happened

 

[Yurinka]

I see.
Just Make TLOU Factions 2 happen.
Multi year content of ND story telling and gameplay in TLOU world. New dream game that will never happen, that almost happened

The idea sounds good on paper, but the evolving and adaptable nature of GaaS post launch content depending on game performance, increasing the ambition and budget of post launch content when it performs great and reducing it when losing interest from players, makes it extremely difficult to ensure permantent addition of expensive stuff as would be great cinematics for the narrative side.

I think they should be secondary short story bits as an extra, as they are doing for Concord, keeping the focus of the game in the gameplay. So it's ok if in the future they drop the story bits once the game doesn't perform well enough to keep them going.

I think that in the case of ND they'd want to focus more on narrative, giving it a key importance and could kill the game once down the line they'd have to stop the story. I think it would be difficult, but also think they could manage it preparing a closing miniart in advance that in the future they could put at any point once they need to interrupt the story.

In any case, this thing of putting narrative in this kind of MP games I'd say is somewhat innovative and experimental so there isn't a safe way to do it ensuring players will like it and they have to try different approaches until one of them clicks.

I think it's an interesting concept and an idea with potential, but it's shame that in Concord they destroyed it killing the narrative, story and writing focusing it on woke/DEI propaganda instead of in building an interesting story and characters.

 

[Kokoloko]

The idea sounds good on paper, but the evolving and adaptable nature of GaaS post launch content depending on game performance, increasing the ambition and budget of post launch content when it performs great and reducing it when losing interest from players, makes it extremely difficult to ensure permantent addition of expensive stuff as would be great cinematics for the narrative side.

I think they should be secondary short story bits as an extra, as they are doing for Concord, keeping the focus of the game in the gameplay. So it's ok if in the future they drop the story bits once the game doesn't perform well enough to keep them going.

I think that in the case of ND they'd want to focus more on narrative, giving it a key importance and could kill the game once down the line they'd have to stop the story. I think it would be difficult, but also think they could manage it preparing a closing miniart in advance that in the future they could put at any point once they need to interrupt the story.

In any case, this thing of putting narrative in this kind of MP games I'd say is somewhat innovative and experimental so there isn't a safe way to do it ensuring players will like it and they have to try different approaches until one of them clicks.

I think it's an interesting concept and an idea with potential, but it's shame that in Concord they destroyed it killing the narrative, story and writing focusing it on woke/DEI propaganda instead of in building an interesting story and characters.

Makes sense.

I just believe TLOU can be alot better than some of the franchises that tried it. Like the Division 1-2, Dayz, Destiny1-2 or even RDR online when it come to those types of online games that play story/coop/pve/pvp etc. I kinda imagined it like a cross between them how the structure works.
And I think the TV series helps it alot too if the timing was right. But the dream is over for now

Yes, interesting concept for this kind of game. I dont know much about Concord’s story yet or character stories. It might be just bad character designs and pronouns that are DEI/Woke influenced and nothing else? Wishful thinking, but maybe.

 

[Yurinka]

Makes sense.

I just believe TLOU can be alot better than some of the franchises that tried it. Like the Division 1-2, Dayz, Destiny1-2 or even RDR online when it come to those types of online games that play story/coop/pve/pvp etc. I kinda imagined it like a cross between them how the structure works.
And I think the TV series helps it alot too if the timing was right. But the dream is over for now

Yes, interesting concept for this kind of game. I dont know much about Concord’s story yet or character stories. It might be just bad character designs and pronouns that are DEI/Woke influenced and nothing else? Wishful thinking, but maybe.

I think that the Factions or Uncharted MP modes did work very well as an extra, but as standalone games, even if adding the GaaS layer of adding content periodically could have felt a bit incomplete.

I think this idea of adding narrative / story bits every week in a cool cinematic, like a tv series, would help specially to better fit there fans of their narrative games. But in any case, if the story they'll put there is "manly and ugly though diverse non-males Mary Sues outsmarts and kicks the ass of an evil while male, haha, fuck the heteropatriarchy!" then I consider there is better to don't waste money on these story bits.

As of now the story is basically the intro we got in the beta and the animated clips they shared on Twitter.

 

[Vertigo]

They cannot monetize PvP maps at risk of segmenting player population. Probably also the reason they don’t have many planned for the short term. It’ll be “free” content.

 

[Gamerguy84]

I do hope the game succeeds it's just not my style. I want Wolverine and as many of those kinds as I can get.

 

[Shmunter]

The idea sounds good on paper, but the evolving and adaptable nature of GaaS post launch content depending on game performance, increasing the ambition and budget of post launch content when it performs great and reducing it when losing interest from players, makes it extremely difficult to ensure permantent addition of expensive stuff as would be great cinematics for the narrative side.

I think they should be secondary short story bits as an extra, as they are doing for Concord, keeping the focus of the game in the gameplay. So it's ok if in the future they drop the story bits once the game doesn't perform well enough to keep them going.

I think that in the case of ND they'd want to focus more on narrative, giving it a key importance and could kill the game once down the line they'd have to stop the story. I think it would be difficult, but also think they could manage it preparing a closing miniart in advance that in the future they could put at any point once they need to interrupt the story.

In any case, this thing of putting narrative in this kind of MP games I'd say is somewhat innovative and experimental so there isn't a safe way to do it ensuring players will like it and they have to try different approaches until one of them clicks.

I think it's an interesting concept and an idea with potential, but it's shame that in Concord they destroyed it killing the narrative, story and writing focusing it on woke/DEI propaganda instead of in building an interesting story and characters.

Creating heavily narrative GaaS games like TLOU will be feasible one day if they can write themselves. No doubt AI will be key.

No reason you cannot offer the AI the lore bible and have it generate unique content offline or real-time, including voice acting, rigging of models, and directing the scenes. Sure as heck we will be there in the not too distant future.