Concord Is Estimated to Have Sold Only 25,000 Units. Here’s Why Analysts Think It’s Failing

What happened to Concord? Why did a big Sony first-party game get sent out to die immediately? Is it actually selling badly, or are we just reading the numbers wrong? As usual when questions of this nature crop up, I asked a bunch of professional industry analysts to explain it to me.

[Games_People_Play]

Nobody wants unpopular activism in their games.
Keep your pronouns to yourself.

[jambola]

yes
i'm sure this game is flopping because of a tiny text in the corner that says "he/him"

[Games_People_Play]

Believe what you want…

It’s counter culture, regardless of how much social media tries to push it.

[Scissorman]

It may not seem like much, but that, coupled with some of the most unimpressive, uninteresting, and downright ugly character designs, are what sealed this game's fate.

[DOMination-]

Come on, it has nothing to do with having pronouns for characters.

99% of gamers aren't on N4G like us following every little detail. And even if they did, the general masses don't get wound up about things like that.

The main reasons for failure at launch is much more simple:

- PlayStation gamers just aren't that interested. They have grown up with Sony producing predominantly single player cinematic bangers and this game is just too far outside of that demographic.
- On PC, the genre is very competitive. Why would anyone pay for this when all the other games are F2P

That's it.

[Cacabunga]

Gaas is reason enough for me not to buy a game, no matter how good it is..

[Markusb33]

it really is, as people now cant tolerate the smallest element of activism, as some entertianment companies try to ram it down your throat for the last 8 years and when they say its only a little text it doesnt matter you mod it out and then they ban your mod, so if it doesnt matter why ban a mod removing it ? Real world politics do not need to be in every single title, also no one asked for another gaas game and hero shooters that never end are awful

[-Foxtrot]

Lets be honest though, people keep going on about the "woke" stuff as the main issue but the real problem is that it's just generic, boring over done slop that we didn't need from Sony.

It's not about being woke or pronouns...it's just a generic, bad game first and foremost.

[Elda]

Exactly. Great gameplay is the key to a game's success, pronouns are the least of a game's success or a lack of.

[H9]

There's no end to generic bad games, they don't flop that hard, it's a bad and woke game, the things people hate the most in one package

[VenomUK]

@-Foxtrot I agree with everything you say about the generic stuff. But what I played of the beta the controls felt fine, reminded me of Halo - that's a good thing but it's not enough. I'm not the key audience for this type of game as I don't play multiplayer online regularly, but the characters and world do matter and I found them lacking. In the first cinematic reveal the one standout was the woman, and I remember the green guy just because he was green.

Even if the developer creates brilliant controls there needs to be something about the world or the characters for everyone to latch onto and I suspect the developers made the vignettes because they knew the world wasn't interesting enough. Then if you magnify that with unattractive characters in an alien universe who use pronouns (no hate to anyone that does) then that immediately spoils the illusion of a different place as it has 'present day/real world' language that is off-putting to many that they are being lectured to by the developers which there is huge resistance to now.

Star Wars Outlaws might have a woke lead but it has the Star Wars universe to sell it.
The Fable reboot has that god-ugly character - but the game has the wonderful fantasy world to sell it.
Concord has THOSE characters - and no world the public know or care about so it naturally had more of an uphill struggle.

[victorMaje]

I originally was really not interested due to live service, non-interesting (imo) characters & no story but I’ve seen a few on here talk about its fun gameplay, which has me intrigued.
I might try it when it goes on sale.

[thejigisup]

Agreed followed by uninteresting character design and poor marketing that seems to push an agenda over gameplay and or narrative. The fact that most people know about this game because of strange character design choices and an inclusion of pronouns over exciting gameplay, graphics, art direction, and strong new narratives is the real problem. People would play if it was fun and engaging, people would stick around if it was good.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I just think the "woke" is the final nail in the coffin, people can't love or get attached to these character designs (unlike Overwatch which had some "woke", but the character designs were better). I watched reviews about the game after the beta came out, and most people didn't seem impressed when it didn't fully adhere to the archetype of "hero Arena Shooters" game play. Too slow and floaty, characters are health sponges, etc...

@VenomUK,
The Green Guy stands out to me too, he seems to be the only one I really remember, or the fat brown girl in the trench coat.

[Markusb33]

yes the progressive stuff is just another negative element, the game is nothing special, it doesnt inspire and no one asked for a new gaas game, in my view sony would have had a bigger hit if they did an online resistance, socom, or killzone, the IP are established and the assets just need updating but imagine how good one of these could have been,just with regular map updates. I would love to see a return to classic games, single player with a MP included that they either update or not all in one price

[gold_drake]

yeeh i agree.

but i think it's also cause its ... just not fun.

[Elda]

I highly doubt the lack of sales is due to pronouns, that is the very least of the games downfall. The core of a game's success is gameplay.

[jambola]

In my experience seeing people react to the trailer, nobody was excited, long before pronounce were shown

[sushimama]

Yep. I'm playstation all the way. But this game can get lost

[purple101]

yeh ,ate totally agree, people will argue it is/ it isn't, but every-single-time a company goes down this path the sales are low, the evidence shows people dont want it shoved in their face, again, you can argue it either way but the sales reflect the public opinion on a whole.

I also played it, and its smooth, quality title, but as someone else suggested, they could have down this same game with PS themed characters, like kratos, ratchet, etc, may have done better.

I also dont think its the price, at £34.99 its way less than a AAA release which would be £49.99 or £59.99, and the same as Helldivers 2, which sold 10 mill.

I RECKON it has something to do with Sonys mahoosive blunder with the Helldivers fiasco, offering it in all regions, only to pull the rug out with PSN account requirement, this may (did) leave a a bad taste =, this alone probably put a few million off just because of the way the handled it, those couple million would be all it needed, to gain traction and be called a success, so Sony literally did this to themselves, and , yer,. pronouns, and making every single female semi-attractive or non-feminine, or however you want to describe it.

[Duke19]

lol. nothing like seeing a “he/him” text on screen to seriously rile up the snowflakes.

I bet you get upset when manuals have languages other than just English in them too.

[Elda]

Agreed. I don't get some folks here being triggered by pronouns when people use them everyday. WTF is supposedly "woke" about Concord or any game being "woke" It seems some folks are using the term to be down low bigoted/biased, when it means to be aware or being woke from sleep.

[TheProfessional]

That's absurd and shows how ignorant you are. No one ever cared about other languages. It's forcing an agenda and virtue signaling/pandering that is the problem. The irony is the companies only do it because they think it's popular but as soon as they realize it isn't they won't care about "dei" anymore.

[attilayavuzer]

It's pretty crazy seeing how many posters here are edgelord conservatives. Like I knew this site had become more and more immature, but this is just embarrassing.

[neutralgamer1992]

Games

Agreed man so much agenda pushing in all media. It’s like being a man is a bad thing now. All these movie studios and game studios pushing it and paying the price. Days gone is a game which got so much negative attention because it had a white male character. Come on that’s just absurd. And this is coming from a person of color. Stop this nonsense it’s completely getting out of control

Jambola

When people are fed up with this nonsense they will look at things and not support it. But these companies aren’t learning. Just look at how much Disney has failed recently and still pushing the same agenda

[thorstein]

The agenda.

Lulz, no.

The boomer gatekeepers retired and could no longer prevent, black, Latino, lgtbq writers from being published.

Instead, Gen X became the gatekeepers. And the one thing that unifies Gen X is they dgaf... especially when it came to gatekeeping.

You think there is some big conspiracy? That's as nutty as the left thinking their protests work.

It's just simply Gen X makes the decisions and they do not gaf.

[neutralgamer1992]

Thostein

Days gone: some critics noted that the game’s story and characters, including the protagonist Deacon St. John, felt generic or uninspired compared to other post-apocalyptic games

As far as concord is concerned good that it failed. Sony needs to focus on what they do best and that’s not GAAS games

Again what the heck are you talking about? No one is stopping anyone from getting published and seen but the issue is now only they want to be heard and their voices are be only ones that matter. They want to silence everyone else with their idiotic statements and cancel culture. We are literally going back decades to see what people said on social media to cancel them

[thorstein]

If you don't know what things are, let me help.

A gatekeeper is someone who decides what gets published, what gets made, what movies get greenlit.

Boomers prevented all of those people I mentioned from getting their stories made. There were always black, Latino, lgbtq, etc writers, they just couldn't get published.

Gen X comes along and changes the paradigm. Not because the left protests and certainly not as part of a goofy conspiracy.

It's simply they dgaf.

That's what I'm talking about.

In the past, those books, games, and movies weren't made and were prevented from being made by Baby Boomers who held that power. Full stop.

As for "they." The ubiquitous "they" and "their agenda."

We didn't go backward because blacks, Latinos, lgbtq, etc etc now have a voice that's equal.

Again, there's no agenda, there's just Gen X not gaf about your weird culture war.

[AndrewM]

Your a fucking idiot if you think thats why the game failed. And you have problems.

[thorstein]

That's not how the English language works.

I bet you don't think they should teach pronouns in elementary school.

[jambola]

I swear lol, some people think pronouns are a trans thing only
I played god of war 1 recently, Imagine the meltdown where the narrator says "he" when referring to Kratos

[Gamingsince1981]

@jambola

No one would care, because kratos IS a he .......

[jambola]

do you really think this game is flopping because pronouns? like serious question

[Hotpot]

All these people who said “wokeism” isn’t the problem forgot about one thing, it’s not just contained in the game itself.

If you hire staffs based on diversity quota and how woke they are instead of meritocracy, the game quality itself will suffer. and that’s not including obligatory SBI “consultation” and decision makers with agenda interfering with game designs.

[TheEroica]

I thought Sony fans didn't want it because it's GaaS trash... Turns out the refection came from their fear of all things different than them. Yikes!

[seanpitt23]

This failed because these types of games were popular 6 years ago when fortnight came out..
Not so much now the honeymoon period soon set sail and now we have more F2P games than ever and with this charging $40 that was the nail in the coffin.

How could Sony be so out of touch it's baffling

[MADGameR]

Amen to that!

[thorstein]

25,000 sales for PSN and Steam. But it was on GoG and Epic too.

At least this article has accurate numbers. We all know it failed, but it's better to have accurate numbers. Articles last week acted like 700 people bought it.

This article is incredibly thorough about the explanation so many people have said about why it didn't do well: saturation, price point, launch window...

[TheNamelessOne]

Those articles are about player numbers. Even if a WHOLE 25k people bought it, what does it matter if only a small fraction of that even cares to play it? Add another 100 for GoG and Epic, by the way. People pretty much use GoG for classic titles, and almost nobody goes to Epic when a Steam version is accessible.

[DOMination-]

Come on dude, the game is so far a huge commercial failure and no spin can change that.

It's a shame for the developers though. I haven't played it myself so can't comment definitely but most who have seem to say the game is pretty solid and has lots of promise.

As ever, live service games live and die by the support it receives post-launch. Sadly for the developers of Concord, I think they are going to pay the price for being the first in Sony''s experimentation. Future Gaas titles will almost certainly be F2P.

Sony have two choices to make here:
- They can either make the game F2P which will immediately piss off the people who paid full price for it
- This will never happen but they should make it free to Ps+ AND Game Pass subscribers. At least that way they'll get people playing it - and from above, it seems like its pretty solid - its player numbers they need right now.

[thorstein]

"Come on dude, the game is so far a huge commercial failure and no spin can change that."

So what part of me saying "We all know it failed" did you not understand?

I know that people on N4G have difficulty with the English language, especially pronouns, reading comprehension etc.

But I was blatant about the failing numbers.

Saying it sold 30,000 proves it failed, but when you prove something, you can't use lies.

I mean, here on N4G users do and run with them, but seriously, I never spun anything.

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

A game with character designs like this ( https://x.com/KhaosKontroll... )wasn’t going to be attractive FPS fans. FPS GAAS has a saturation point, which it probably has already reached.

[CantThinkOfAUsername]

Yeah, we need the circus show like CoD. That's what people buy.

[RhinoGamer88]

Leadership values on both teams. Layoffs will probably result...not with the leadership though. #sadgame

[Elda]

I'm surprised it sold that much. After the little bit of sales cease it'll be F2P in a few months.

[sushimama]

Good. I'm Playstation guy mainly and I want this game to fail badly, and may we never hear of it's like again

[46player]

No need for analysts. We know why.

[Duke19]

I had nearly heard about it and definitely had no idea it even released. Did they even ATTEMPT to market it?

[Friendlygamer]

Wonder if sony will change their strategy after fairgame$ inevitably also flops, I think heads will roll

[-Foxtrot]

I can't see Fairgame$ releasing after this

Not in the same way

They either need to revamp it or just cancel it.

[coolbeans]

But that's going for an extraction shooter niche, which is tangibly different.

[Profchaos]

Yeah no chance

@coolbeans different niche same problem it's a genre that's quickly becoming full of f2p alternatives so selling a full price game is a huge gamble and Sony won't make it f2p but they will smash it full of mtx

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

If I've learnt anything about companies/corporations, it's that they tend to be more stubbornly headstrong than you would expect, even when large sums of money are involved.

[TheColbertinator]

Analysts? They should pay me to tell them why.

[ocelot07]

I think they need to make it f2p asap give the ones who paid for the game free season passes for as long as the game servers are up.

If they can still support destruction all stars (remember that game?) then I'm sure they can at least give Concord 4 years to try and do something.

[Kornholic]

Destruction All Stars' servers have been down since May, I believe.

[generic-user-name]

Hey Sony, you were advised to release Concord but cancel TLOU Online. Now you can see that was very stupid advice. It's not too late, scrap Concord and get TLOU Online back in the oven, Firewalk can transition to a ND support studio and roll out live service content for that instead.

[Ninver]

Good! I'm proud of fellow gamers who spoke with their wallets. Nobody asked for this turd. Give us the incredible AAA experiences we've come to appreciate.

[EazyC]

Gamers are pretty brain-dead but only to a certain level (I mean, they clearly buy into GaaS, mtx etc) but you would have to had been INSANE to think this game would be successful.

[vTuro24]

I don't think we need analysts to tell us why this one's failing, chief.

[Profchaos]

Nobody wanted the game the devs attacking fans doesn't help

[yeahokwhatever]

I know why its not selling. I'm a fairly hardcore gamer and I didn't even know about this game until now.

[Hedstrom]

The reason im not buying it is because of the "woke". I have zero appeal to play as any of the characters in the game. And that is enough to make me not want to buy the game. And i havent seen but heard there are prounance in the game, that makes me not want to buy the game. And that is because it is gay! But not in a homosexuell way, they are cool. But in a way that is forced upon people who wants nothing to do with it, wich is gay in a bad way!

[jambola]

every game has pronouns

[Playstati0n]

Pronouns do not need to be announced. They can simply be inferred in normal societies.

[jambola]

@Shloopybuns

lol what
clown pronouns? who said anything about that?

I just said every game has pronouns
or did you not read my comment? was it that confusing to you?

[HankHill]

Good.

[Chocoburger]

Yet I was told that this game was a better investment than Ape Escape 4, and that there aren't enough fans of platforming games on PlayStation these days.

Insane gibberish some will spout out. 😂

Looking forward to seeing Astro Bot selling well soon enough.

[Good-Smurf]

Nothing like another unoriginal copycat coming into the over saturated market with bored tired and burned-out public that couldn't keep up with all the time sinkers looter shooter that is also just ugly to look at in the Concord's case is such a double dud and turnoff to most.
I just want them right back to do smaller scale games but it's a lost art nowadays and even they let Indies and 3rd party to do all the heavy lifting when their game output is off.
Astro Bot is our chance us fans to send them the right message that we want stuff like Astro Bot back instead of whatever big money Live Service experiments they got themselves into and trapped in.
Let Concord be the one expensive lesson for them to learn that Live Service is a deadly obsession and desire for perpetual easy money making.
Continue on this path and they will lose more than they gain.

[Solitariussaint]

GaaS is a mistake for Sony. GaaS is no good for the long term health of the videogame industry either.

[sagapo]

Sorry, but that’s bull imo. A good Gaas game can co-exist with single player games. A MMO game is kinda like a Gaas is it not? And they’ve been around for decades.

I would worry more about digital only and stuff like Gamepass for the health of the industry than Gaas games to be honest.

[Kassanova07]

Single player experiences is what the public wants. This game was DoA. Listen to the PEOPLE!

[CrimsonWing69]

We don’t need analysts to make guesses. Look at the majority of the comments just on this site, leading up to it. I think at some point developers need to start listening to their consumers… Y’know, the people they need to buy their product 🤷‍♂️

[thorstein]

N4G doesn't represent gaming.

Seriously, the most downvotes I get here are usually about pronouns and it's about 20 people.

This site gets 1 million+ visitors almost every day. They don't interact in the discussions. I rarely do but when I do, holy hell, there are some sadly misinformed people here.

I wouldn't think they're indicative of "gamers."

[CrimsonWing69]

It’s a good way of getting a finger on the pulse of things. The majority comments have reflected the overall consensus for this and Star Wars Outlaws is another example.

[Tedakin]

The game just looks so slow and bland compared to its competitors, which are free. The character designs are all boring. For all its faults, Overwatch has nearly 40 characters and every one of them has an interesting design.

[Tankbusta40]

The video game industry has massive issues because one game in a random genre becomes a hit and then for the next 5-8 years these studios try to chase and 98% fail....be original

[Junghova]

Xbox could use some new games