Video Game Industry In Turmoil: Sony Axes 'Concord' A Mere Two Weeks After Launch
Image Source: Fanatical
The woes of the video game industry seem to be continuing with recent news coming from the Sony quadrant of the market.
Looking to join the ranks of the hero shooter games like Overwatch, Siege, and more, Sony’s attempt, called Concord, launched August 20th to little more than an aborted trumpet blast. Since then, it saw a peak concurrent player total of 697. That’s right, 697 total players playing at once, across the planet.
It was then announced, less than two weeks after launch, that it would be shuttered, and refunds would be made for those who purchased the game. Its final day of service was September 6, at which point there were only 33 concurrent players.
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There’s a lot to unpack here, and there’s been numerous analytical articles across the gaming news sites offering their take on what it all means. The game was in development for eight years and launched with little marketing to call attention to it. This seems to continue a trend in the video game industry where the decisions of the executives, who are responsible for the livelihoods of the people who actually make the games, are made with out regard for those people by chasing trends in an industry they cannot predict. As a result of their obsession with short-sighted gains, people are now out of jobs, and the industry continues to suffer from poor decision making.
The reviews weren’t kind, either, but a glance at them suggests the game’s woes were a lack of marketing, and a failure to capture the personality that underscores the litany of other hero shooters now on the market. For that to be said after eight years of development (for an in-house, first-party studio, where the average game development time is about five years now), it suggests there was an air of indifference to the game and that it was perhaps greenlit to try and take advantage of the popularity of games like Siege and Overwatch without any real interest in capitalizing on what made them successful.
The disappointing launch and premature end of Concord highlight the unfortunate state the video game industry is in, and doesn’t offer any real sense of hope that the spiral is almost over.
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