There are more and more titles that have a big budget and that after many years of development fail to meet the expectations of the company that launches them in terms of sales, but there is one that has managed to stand out for being practically a title that has only lasted two weeks after having had a large investment. We are talking about the hot topic currently in the video game industry, Concordthe latest game of Sony which will close its servers very soon due to the failure which has meant for the company.
Games created by extremely large companies usually have a number of positive aspects, such as large marketing campaigns, developer experience and support from the brand itself, but they also have their negative aspects. Among these we can find the pressure, for example, of launching a title that has a system as a service for a fairly high price, knowing that there are a large number of alternatives on the market that are free and against which it is difficult to compete.
One of Sony’s biggest failures in recent years, Concord, will shut down its servers on September 6th
For years we have seen how there are games that manage to become benchmarks in the industry, either for good or bad reasons, causing a large number of varied opinions on how the development of a title should be, as well as the options that companies have to launch them on the market. But something that we surely did not expect was to see how one of the big launches of a company like Sony would end up closing its servers after two weeks, after eight years of development and about 100 million dollars invested.
One of the biggest problems facing Concord is clear, and that is that the title is a perfect replica of what Overwatch would be, so much so that the development of Sony’s own game began practically the same year that Blizzard’s game came out. But this is not the biggest problem that this title faced, mainly due to the fact that the hero shooter They currently have a large player base that is always looking for something new, the problem being the fact that Concorddoesn’t really offer anything new to this genre.
As you can imagine, the game actually isn’t bad, you can tell it’s been in development for a long time as it was extremely polished and could have become a benchmark if it weren’t for the fact that most of the criticism it’s had is focused on the fact that a game of this type is currently being released for €40. Valorant, Overwatch 2 and some upcoming free-to-play releases like Marvel Rivals or FragPunk are some of the hero-shooters that Concord was trying to compete against, and it was pretty obvious that it wasn’t going to go well.
What will happen to this game now?
One of the measures that Sony has taken at first is to completely close the servers and return to the users who request it the money they have paid for the game, which indicates that the ending is as tragic as possible, although from the official PlayStation Blog they leave a window open for what may happen in the future. Ryan Ellis, the director of this title announced yesterday the closure of the servers with a message in which he indicated that the launch was not at all what they expected, but he has not made it clear that they are going to abandon the title.
The statement itself indicated that they would seek to explore more options after closing the servers on September 6:
«Concord fans, we’ve been listening closely to your feedback since Concord launched on PlayStation 5 and PC. […] Your support and the passionate community that has sprung up around the game mean a lot to us.
However […] We also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch did not land the way we intended. Therefore, at this time, we have decided to take the game offline as of September 6, 2024 and explore options, including those that better resonate with our players.