With Concord’s launch and closure coming literally two weeks apart from each other, many gamers are already openly talking about how this must surely be the biggest failure in gaming.
As we ourselves discussed, we won’t ever be truly sure if that is the case. While we could immediately check on some of its metrics thanks to SteamDB, for much of gaming history that data is not easily available to access. In fact, the video game industry is so slipshod in recording its own history that we aren’t sure when Super Mario Bros. was first released in America.
We can certainly reckon that this could be the biggest failure in modern gaming. Sony has yet to reveal how much it cost them to develop and market Concord, or how much it cost them to acquire Firewalk Studios. But we know that it has the lowest player numbers of a AAA game like it. Its closest equivalent there, PlatinumGames’ Babylon’s Fall, peaked at 1,188 players, compared to its player peak of 697. We also know that Concord is not the fastest AAA game to close shortly after its launch. CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077 was released on December 10, 2020, and pulled from the PlayStation Store on December 17, because of the terrible technical issues it had on the PlayStation 4.
What we can do now, is assess Sony’s other failures and figure out where the bar for failure would be. On that end, Sony also has not shared that much data, but it’s useful to at least make the point of comparison.
The Order 1886 will immediately come to mind for some fans, though Sony and Ready at Dawn never shared its actual sales numbers. Gravity Rush 2, unfortunately, ended its own franchise, having sold only 400,000 units. But vibes don’t really match reality in this case – Days Gone, widely considered to be a lesser PlayStation franchise, sold a respectable 7.32 million units as of February 2022.
If we are talking game sales, it certainly looks like Concord already lowered the bar set by Gravity Rush 2. But if we’re talking about failures in terms of how much they cost Sony, there’s a bigger candidate that looms over Sony to this day. Sony acquired Bungie, including their IP Destiny 2, in 2022 for a staggering $ 3.6 billion. This was definitely at a bigger scale than what Sony paid for Firewalk and Concord.
It isn’t likely that Concord would have cost Sony as much as Destiny 2 and Bungie did. But it must be said, in spite of Bungie’s own failures, that they continue to make money for Sony. On the odd chance that Marathon and future Destiny 2 content are able to turn Bungie’s fortunes around, it may eventually pay for itself and Sony.
But that isn’t as likely to happen for Firewalk and Concord. In this case, we need to see Sony announce that they aren’t closing Firewalk and/or laying off their employees, and they have to make this investment worthwhile. This uncertainty is where we are now, and unfortunately that uncertainty may end when Sony shares numbers and makes announcements that won’t be favorable to everyone.
So maybe Sony already knows how much they have lost on Concord, and if they would consider it their biggest failure. Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki may flat out announce this in their next financial meeting, though we imagine he has bigger fish to fry at Bungie. In any case, Concord’s dubious place in video gaming history has definitely been secured. We can only hope that they have an opportunity to bounce back from that, just like PlatinumGames and CD Projekt RED.
