Why Are People Happy That Concord Is Failing?
Because some people hate Sony / PlayStation
The speaker says that Sony fans hate Concord because it represents a transition on the part of Jim Ryan to live service games.
Jim Ryan never said they were going to transition to live service games. He announced that they planned to have a dozen IPs with live service games, most of which already were in the works.
Old school PlayStation fans hate Concord because it represents everything they hate about modern AAA games. Concord is a game that is only green lit because developers were hoping or Executives were hoping that it would pop off even though it had basically no chance of doing that.
People loved Destiny 2, MLB, GT7 and Helldivers 2, and also other recent 3rd party live service games like ZZZ or First Descendant.
And most of the most played ones on PS and PC like EAFC, eFootball, NBA2K, Fall Guys, Rocket League, Asphalt Legends, Dota 2, Naraka, GTA Online... are also GaaS. Fortnite, PUBG, Apex Legends, Rainbow Six, CS, CoD, Valorant, Overwatch etc are also GaaS MP shooters.
So Concord's issue is not being a GaaS or a shooter.
He also says that Concord represents a huge colossal waste of time and money and resources from a company that has seen their output of the products customers actually want drop precipitously.
Its cost must have been the same of similar games, nothing leads to think it's particularly big. And their output is totally fine, they have like a dozen games planned fo have been released this year.
No. If some people is happy of Concord tanked is because they are haters who hate Sony or because the game had specific things of the they didn't like, at least to the point of leaving other games to move to this.
The price isn't also an issue because people didn't go for it in the free beta, the $40 did wonders for Helldivers 2 and most of the MP shooters who are top in the market also are -or started as- paid games.
In the technical side the game is more than solid and very polished, most areas are very well done, not worse than many top players of this game type: theme & setting, gunplay, game flow, monetization, game modes, mechanics and progression design, art, animation, music, UI/UX, cutscenes, fps, visuals in general, servers stability & online quality...
So having ruled out being a GaaS, a MP shooterl, its pricing or these technical areas I'd say the main issues of the game are:
- Character design and story made on purpose not appealing for around 90%+ of the demographics of this subgenre, when to love the characters is something key for this subgenre, like in others like fighting games etc.: they focused instead on filling wokism/DEI checklists and trying to be specially ugly, bland, uncharismatic or unappealing for white, heterosexual and male (which happens to be around 90%+ of the userbase of these subgenres).
- Not enough differentiation with something that stands out versus the top players of this subgenre. Lacked more personality to differentiate from the others making players to choose it over the rest because does something way better or in a new and more cool way than the other ones. It has some small new good idea here and there, but they are small details. Not important enough to say "hey I'm bored to play that mode in the other games and I prefer to play this new one because it's more fun" or "I love this new artstyle an visuals compared to the others", "this characters are more cool than the ones in the other games"
I think to add diversity is positive when makes sense in terms of game theme/setting (in this particular case fits), when done respectfully (not in the typical woke propaganda case of white males being only portrayed as bad guys and there are scenes than in terms of story don't tell anything other than being 'a-ha'
scene showing that some female/non-binary/diverse characters are smarter/stronger/more skilled than the evil white males). I think diversity is also positive if done in a way that appeals to big enough audience inside that niche/submarket to sustain that project.
I also think than to take references that work from successful games also helps to make a game solid, but on top of that you have to add your own things, sauce and style, doing some things in a different (or way better) way that makes the game more appealing than the competition to the people who plays the game, to feel unique and cool instead of ugly, boring and generic.
