Firewalk Studios

My Analysis & Predictions

It wasn't until May 2024 before we actually saw Concord with a story and a gameplay trailer - both were horrendously received. The story was seen as a poor clone of Guardians of the Galaxy and the hero shooter gameplay was seen as a worse Overwatch.

The playable betas in July then worsened this perception. The story and character design were universally negative and the gameplay, though fun, was not good enough to justify its $40 price tag. Especially compared to its F2P competitors like Fortnite.

This led to a historically poor launch for Sony. It's tied with Firewall Ultra as the worst reviewed PS Studios PS5 game on Metacritic at 62, and only sold roughly 25k copies between PC and PS5. Totalling less than $1 million in revenue despite an estimated $200 million budget.

This result was so bad that on September 3rd, 11 days after Concord launched, PlayStation removed it off all storefronts and refunded all purchases. A monumental move for Sony as it's the first time a PlayStation Studios game has ever been refunded due to its reception.

Firewalk are exploring options on how to bring back Concord in a way that resonates, but there's no guarantee it comes back at all. Regardless, they need to pivot fast if they hope to survive.