Sony has revealed the details of Concord’s beta in a new post in the PlayStation Blog.
As announced this month, early access will prioritize users who have preordered Concord. Early Access will run from July 12 to 14, 2024. That’s a good weekend for buyers to get their first impressions in. It seems that Firewalk wants as many people to get in early access as possible, as they offer Concord Beta Early Access to four extra gamers, for every pre-order of any edition of the game.
That early access is also available on PlayStation 5 and PC, but to address the other elephant in the room now, yes, Concord is region locked. That means there will be no time where Concord will be playable on PC if you live in a country or region that does not have PSN. It will still be playable if you have a PlayStation 5, since Sony made arrangements to accept US PSN accounts even if they were made or used outside of the US.
With that out of the way, the proper Concord Open Beta will run from July 18 to 21, 2024. There will be no need for codes that time, but the limitations of PSN accounts and region locking will still apply.
Whether you get in during the Open Beta or Early Access, you will be able to choose all 16 playable characters at launch. Now, we don’t really know any of these characters right now, but Sony and Firewalk will also start rolling out the first cinematics to get players invested in them in this period.
The game launches on Early Access with four maps, with a fifth map to be added in the Open Beta. Subsequently, there will be three modes on Early Access, and a fourth one added in Open Beta, and we’ll detail those below.
Trophy Hunt is Team Deathmatch. You hunt down players in the rival team and collect their bounty cards to earn points. The first team to reach the target score before the time ends, wins, and yes, there are respawns.
Cargo Run is a payload mode with its own unique provisions. They call their payloads the Blue Buddy, and the objective is to bring it to a specific zone and then successfully defend it. This one has no respawns.
Clash Point is a Capture The Flag variation. You fight to control a single capture zone at the center of the map. This mode has several rounds and there are no respawns.
The mode that will open up in Open Beta is Area Control, another Capture the Flag variation. This time, there are two or more capture zones to control and defend, and you have to reach a point threshold to win. This mode has respawns.
Early buzz for Concord seems positive, but it remains to be seen if the PlayStation fanbase itself will be successfully drawn to this game, at launch or in the months afterwards. Even a live service game with a bad launch can win gamers over as long as it survives, but we are now in the era where Payback 3 has completely faltered and the once lauded The Finals now suffers from low player numbers.
