Games Media Personnel Debunk Claims of Concord's $400 Million Budget

The rumor of Concord's budget was at $400M has been debunked by games media personnel, as the game didn't even get above-the-line marketing.

[_SilverHawk_]

People will continue to make up absurd things about concord just like i predicted. I didn't believe that game costs anywhere close to half a billion dollars but people will continue to pile on because they were truly hurt by the production of this game that I thought was a good game. The developers had the audacity to make a good game semi-similar to other games with character models not seen before with gender pronouns.

[Michiel1989]

the game gave us no reason to play Concord instead of Overwatch or Valorant but then you combine it with awful character design and nonsene agendapushing, then my friend you get a dumpsterfire. It was 8 years in development, who thought it was a good idea to hold a beta 1 month before release? It wasn't a beta, it was a failed attempt at marketing, cause fuck all can get changed in that time.

[Einhander1972]

The studio was formed in 2018...

[Michiel1989]

overwatch released in 2016, they had the blueprint.

[Einhander1972]

The game couldn't have possibly been in development for 8 years when the studio didn't even exist for 8 years.

The game failed, that is a fact, but a lot of what is being said about it is clearly untrue.

[Michiel1989]

it says 8 years everywhere. It could have been in preproduction somewhere and later created a new studio for it, wouldn't have been the first time and won't be the last. I think Sony even said it themselves

[Einhander1972]

I don't care what it says everywhere, that is how the internet is. Just because a lot of people say something doesn't make it true.

"I read it on the internet it must be true" LoL

[Michiel1989]

ok 6 years then, still abysmal development if this is all they could come up with. If i believed everyting said I would have said it would have cost them 400m. 2 levels and 2.5 characters per year for a 150+ man team. That screams massive problems and a money pit.

[Einhander1972]

I mean, you are determined to say the longest possible amount of time you can get away with... No matter how unrealistic that may be...

[Chevalier]

Wait so let me get this straight. The Last of Us 2 apparently cost about $220 million to make and had 2000+ people working on it.

But you think that Concord which topped out at 150 employees cost $400 million to make?! Please explain the logic here.

[DodoDojo]

@Einhander

If it wasn't in development for 8 years, why do the developers say it was?

https://x.com/sharkeatsman/...

[thorstein]

Do you believe a developer founded in 2018 was working on a game in 2016?

If not, do you believe the people that reported that may have lied about other things or that a studio with no games behind it was able to amass half a billion dollars to make this game on their own? And who would pay them to do this? Probably Monsters Inc. who owned Firewalk and owns other studios was founded in 2016 with 250 million.

Sony bought Firewalk in April 2023.

[DodoDojo]

@Thorstein
The 8 years development time claim came from the developers themselves. Firewalk Studios Lead Gameplay Designer Claude Jerome and Lead Character Designer Jon Weisnewski went on the official PlayStation Blog and said they've been working on it for 10 years but it only had 8 years of actual development.

[thorstein]

Reminds me of when users on here claimed that 193 - 73 = 180.

[babadivad]

This article said little and less. On top of that, it didn't debunk anything.

[Chevalier]

"The Acolyte cost 180 million dollars"

Yeah, but, Star Wars shows have hundreds more staff. But my point is that TLOU 2 had over 2000 people work on it and cost $220 million. But you want me to believe a game that had 150 people making it cost more than double that with 1/10 of the staff.

[Notellin]

Tell us how much it cost to acquire Firewalk and also to publish the game if you know so much. Your experience as a Wal-Mart cashier should come in handy for your analysis.

[isarai]

Thought so, that was an absurd cost for ANY game let alone a MP only game

[excaliburps]

Yep, but you had people believing that crap. I mean, websites ran that. I don't think they believed it themselves, but the urge of Concord, bait and traffic seemed too good to pass up.

[Mr_cheese]

People believed it because they wanted to. It was an extreme figure which made sony and concord look even worse than before.

[Chevalier]

This is how absurd that number is. The Last of Us 2 cost $220 million to make and had 2100+ people work on the game.

But this media and certain people here think that Concord which topped out at 150 people working on the game cost $400 million to make.

Grand Theft Auto 5 apparently cost $265 million to make too which at the time was the most expensive entertainment product ever made even considering other media like movies.

[babadivad]

Mismanagement causes budgets to balloon. The Acolyte cost 180 million dollars but the end product doesn't reflect a budget that large. Especially for only 8 roughly half hour episodes.

It's the unseen cost of incompetence.

[Notellin]

Concord did not have only 150 people work on it. Sony brought in multiple support studios over the last 18 months which is mentioned all over the place. The credits are 3 hours long and mention significantly more names than 150.

Every game has consultants, voice actors, etc.

Ignoring the facts doesn't make you correct it makes you ignorant.

[purple101]

Films like Avatar cost 300 million

This is a game with 12 small levels and 16 characters
No way their small cut scenes added 300 mill to the price .

[Michiel1989]

the question should be how did they manage to only make that in 8 years, that already shows there are massive problems there, which often lead to loads of money lost. We will never know the number but I wouldn't be surprised if its pretty far over 200m.

[purple101]

Yes I suppose if they brought the property offices, all the tech and any debt owed, it could rack up! Got to pay those bonuses we keep hearing about too ! Haha

[Notellin]

What a terrible comparison.

An extremely experienced film maker and studio creates a movie against a brand new video game studio making their first game.

Completely useless comment.

[UltimateOne88]

I can’t believe there are still articles about this game. The game is dead and buried, please move on to articles about games people care about and quit beating a dead horse!

[ChasterMies]

UltimateOne88 is 100% wrong about this. As a PlayStation certified gaming connoisseur, I want to know everything that happened with the development of “Concord”, including the cost. Keep the articles coming.

[Popsicle]

If a massive failure like Concord is buried, the mistakes cannot be learned from and could be repeated. It is always important to perform a post mortem so Sony and gaming can head in better direction moving forward.

Failures of this scope, even if the budget was half of the $400 million that was alleged, lead to the death of developers, the loss of jobs, and is ultimately bad for gamers. See Atari’s ET in the early 1980s. Hard lesson, but needs to be studied.

[derek]

@Popsicle, lol a game came out that nobody liked, big deal. I didn't care to play the game even the beta, but the overreacting to this game is absurd. There is no "studying" going on here just ridiculous claims and your standard console warring.

[Popsicle]

@derek I am of 100% belief that YOU aren’t studying the failure any further, but I guarantee you that Sony is and their Board of Directors will want answers. If they aren’t, they are not acting in the best interest of their business or the consumer.

[babadivad]

Because it's the possibly the biggest flop in video game history. That's going to keep interest up for a while.

[derek]

It was always a stupid estimate and I'm surprised Colin wouldn't challenge his so called source for purposely spreading disinformation. Tomorrow it will be $500 million. They couldn't spend $400 million even if they tried on Concord.

[TheProfessional]

You're a joke. Keep making excuses for PS. If it was a microsft game you wouldn't mind the criticism though right? How many refall articles were there?

This is the biggest failure in the history of gaming but hey that's convenient that no one should talk about it.

[LucasRuinedChildhood]

I doubt that the big YouTubers who capitalised on this (1 million plus views) like Asmongold are going to do a follow-up video correcting this narrative.

[Good-Smurf]

Guy didn't even do any video on Astro Bot, he just another long lines of youtubers whose bread and butter is reacting talking on negative news rumors reviews and videos.

[trez1082]

Yes and those are same people complaining about “ the gaming industry “ without the realisation they’re also part of the problem and in some cases big part of the problem. They should be as loud with positive gaming news too.

[Einhander1972]

Yeah, I suspected as much when they tried to claim that this small studio had spent 200m before Sony even bought them. There was no way a studio with no major games could have afforded or got financed 200m.

[JEECE]

People really don't know what the word "debunk" means. A rumor isn't debunked just because someone states their belief that it isn't true. Whether the $400 million rumor is true or not (it admittedly seems farfetched), someone saying "I don't think that's true" on Twitter doesn't debunk it. If that were the case, it was debunked by about ten different people on here within thirty minutes of the story being posted.

[TylerFischer]

lol we don't trust the games media when convenient and trust them when it is

[Einhander1972]

It's not even that at all.

As I pointed out above, the media was quick to run with this 8 year story even though the studio only existed for 6 years. And as I also pointed out who would fund a new studio with less than 100 people and zero track record 200m, that's the budget of EA, Ubisoft, Activision and PlayStations biggest games, no one is realistically going to give this studio that kind of money. It's simply common sense.

It's not about trusting what people want to hear it's rational thought.

But on the flip side the people who were hating on this game were willing to believe anything as long as it was negative... like a six year old studio was working on a game for 8 years.... That is demonstrably false and was easily fact checked.

[TylerFischer]

The same people who bought the studio before it even shipped its first game and thought they had a smash hit on their hands. 200 million is also nothing compared to what games currently in development are spending. That is the funniest part about all of this. Concord's budget is going be a drop in the bucket very soon. In five years, game budgets tripled in cost. Spider-Man went from 90 million to make to 300 million to make in a handful of years. How much do you think Spider-Man 3 is going to cost? A lot more than Concord.

[Notellin]

Yes it is. Colin Moriarty and Ethan Gach are well respected 90% of the time and people are always hating on Tom Warren.

The situation is completely flipped and everyone is defending the biggest Microsoft paid shill in existence. Tom Warren is a joke.

Gamers are all ignorant. No wonder we get treated so horribly as a group the intelligence just isn't there.

[TheProfessional]

Are you delusional? The developers themselves said how long it was in development.

[thorstein]

You either believe games cost hundreds of millions of dollars or you know they don't.

Same goes for movies. You either believe they cost hundreds of millions of dollars or you know they cost less than 15 million like Godzilla Minus One did.

[BiggCMan]

This isn't debunking anything. Colin's info came from a source directly in Sony. These tweets are not mentioning anything relevant at all, and they don't have the connections that Colin does. The information that he described is not some stuff he just made up. It is exactly what was told to him, from a person who came DIRECTLY to him only. So unless this person decided to give out false information, which I guess is possible (why though?), then nothing is debunked at all. Do better writing, this is embarrassing and exactly why Colin still puts people to shame.

[TheColbertinator]

"So unless this person decided to give out false information, which I guess is possible (why though?"

Because people lie on the internet to get attention for their podcasts and Youtube. Companies lie too. I don't have a personal stake with Concord. To me the game looked stupid and uninteresting from day one but unless we see some official documents from a court filing or an investor meeting transcript, we may never know what truly Sony wasted on that game.

Colin, much like the rest of the gaming press like Tom Warren or Jez Corden, say all this stuff but too much ends up not being true.

[gold_drake]

yea 400 mil was abit .. much. but im pretty sure they lost out on alot of money regardless.

but ... where are the people that called others bootlicker and some other nasty things for simply disagreeing with it.

go on, time to come out now.

[babadivad]

Nothing in this article debunked anything...

[MeteorPanda]

how is it debunking without any proof? The 400m came from someone who had gotten information from Sony themselves and the rest as he stated was speculation of a 8 year dev timeline.

[derek]

There is no "proof" that the game,cost 400 million to make either. At least those saying there's no way it costs that much have logic and reason on their side.

[TheProfessional]

@derek you're a ps apologist. That's it. This is the biggest failure ever in gaming and whether it was 250 mill 300 or 400 it's still garbage and they lost hundreds of millions.

Show proof that it didn't cost 400 or stfu. An inside source is still more credible than conjecture on Twitter and certainly more credible than your opinion.

[MADGameR]

Well, rather it's true or not, the loss was incurred. The people who will buy the PS5 PRO will pay $699.99 + Concord Tax

[TicklefistCP]

One guy tells you what he was told by someone with knowledge. Another guy says "naaaaaah." Not debunked.