Today, September 6, 2024, represents a very awkward day for Sony, owner of the PlayStation brand and one of the biggest names in gaming. On the one hand, it's the day they're shutting down Concord, the failed hero-shooter that went live for only two weeks before its downfall. On the other, it's the launch of Astro Bot, one of its most anticipated games of 2024.
Of course, if Sony had its way, this awkward situation wouldn't have manifested in the first place. However, having two games following two opposing paths in terms of development, scope and appeal being released so close to each other likely meant that this situation was inevitable should one fail.
However, beyond the awkward timing between Concord's demise and Astro Bot's release, these two games also represent a hard choice Sony needs to make fin regards to how it makes games moving forward.
Do they continue down the path that led them to Concord, trying to learn from their mistakes in the hopes of finally getting that big live service hit? Or should they make more games in the spirit of Astro Bot, smaller, standalone games that often harken to and celebrate PlayStation's past?
Why did Concord fail?
When it became obvious that Concord was a bust, many theories sprung up on the internet on why the game failed. Most of these focused on the fact that it was a paid game in a market filled with free-to-play games, others pointed to nebulous ideas of it being "woke" or influenced by DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) concerns. Few, however, seemed to point out that Sony spent the better part of eight years spending hundreds of millions of dollars chasing a trend only to release the game in an oversaturated market.
While Sony first announced Concord in 2023, developer Firewalk had been working on it since around 2016. This is the year that Overwatch launched, bringing the hero shooter genre to the mainstream. In other words, Sony and Firewalk decided to chase the hero shooter trend and decided the best way to do so was to spend a ludicrous amount of time and money to give Concord the same level of graphical fidelity and content richness that most big, full-priced AAA releases have.
However, in the time it took for Concord to release, numerous other hero shooters, or games with hero shooter-inspired elements, have come and gone. (Read: Gundam Evolution to shut down in November 2023)
Concord, then, had to compete for attention with a myriad of other games – including Overwatch's own sequel – for gamers' attention. At the same time, the game's $40 price tag – most likely necessitated by the amount of money Sony had sunk into it – provided a major barrier to entry in a genre that had shifted to free-to-play.
With all this, it was almost guaranteed that Concord would fail. Yes, the game's somewhat generic AAA-looking character designs may not have helped, but overall, there's still the pervading feeling that the game would have done better had it been released in 2018 (the year Sony fully acquired Firewalk) and not 2024.
Why is Astro Bot making waves?
Even in the middle of the Concord fiasco, Sony seems to have some good news with the positive reception to Astro Bot. As of press time, the game has a Metacritic score of 94 with 99 percent positive reviews, making it this year's highest-rated standalone game so far.
Meanwhile, even though sales for Astro Bot have yet to be released as of press time, pre-orders for the game had already surpassed lifetime sales for Concord.
Compared to Concord, it's easy to see why Astro Bot has resonated with both critics and gamers. It's a mostly standalone game that seems free of any sort of live-service elements for one. At the same time, the game looks to be a love letter not just to all things PlayStation as its predecessor, as the free Astro's Playroom demo that came pre-installed on PlayStation 5 was, but to gaming in general. The game is chock-full of references to even franchises outside those owned nor exclusive to PlayStation.
Of course, the game itself is good – no surprise considering that the original was an excellent showcase of how the PlayStation 5's abilities could create novel and fun gameplay experiences. The game exudes the same creativity you'd expect from something like a Mario game from Nintendo.
While we don't know how much Astro Bot is ultimately going to make, the initial reception to it makes it look like the game will be a success for the company.
Where will Sony go from here?
If you've been paying close attention to what's been written here, it should be obvious that we'd prefer it if Sony did more games like Astro Bot than Concord. This kind of smaller game that's not aiming to be the next live-service hit, but is filled to the brim with creativity and love for video games is just the kind of thing that many gamers want.
More importantly, games like this take much less time and money to make. According to GamesIndustry's Chris Ding, Astro Bot only took three years and $60 million to make.
In other words, Sony could have released around three Astro Bot-sized in the time it took to release Concord, based on development time alone. These are three more games for the PlayStation 5, a console criticized for having a lackluster library of exclusives compared to its predecessor.
Yes, having more games out means more chances for one or two titles to fail, but these games failing would be less cause for concern than that of something as expensive as Concord.
In addition, it would allow the company to bring back some of its beloved franchises that don't necessarily need the AAA big-budget treatment, instead of betting it all chasing trends.
Whether or not Sony will make this pivot, however, is still up in the air. The company still has one other big, trend-chasing multiplayer live-service title in the works, after all in Bungie's Marathon.
That said, I'm hoping that Astro Bot serves as a wake-up call for Sony and its C-suite so that the company can start making the games that players want, and that its platform desperately needs.
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