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CriticalGaming

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Apparently there were some game modes that you could not even play because there were never enough people to fill the lobby.
 
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Hades

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A shame for the devs but kinda well deserved. Executives had no business pushing through yet ANOTHER live service almost a decade after the genre became outdated and discredited. If Avengers, the biggest IP in the world right now can't carry one. then why would this one work?

I hope the extreme humiliation might shake the executives awake
 

CriticalGaming

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A shame for the devs but kinda well deserved. Executives had no business pushing through yet ANOTHER live service almost a decade after the genre became outdated and discredited. If Avengers, the biggest IP in the world right now can't carry one. then why would this one work?

I hope the extreme humiliation might shake the executives awake
It wont sadly.
 
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Can reasonably surmise that Jim Ryan had his $weaty mitts on this in the thick of development like the other 11 live service games Sony has in the pipeline before he left.

 
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Bob_McMillan

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I was gonna say I was impressed that they're putting out refunds, but then I remembered they probably didn't even breach half a million bucks in revenue. I'm pretty sure the Day Before scammers were able to pocket more than that.
 
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Dirty Hipsters

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8 years and $100 M (estimated). I am really not sure why anyone would put that much investment in time and money, but you would think someone would stop and think "Hmm, maybe this project isn't going to be profitable?"
I heard that between development and marketing the game ended up costing something like $200,000 per user, which is insane.
 

Bedinsis

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8 years and $100 M (estimated). I am really not sure why anyone would put that much investment in time and money, but you would think someone would stop and think "Hmm, maybe this project isn't going to be profitable?"
I'm trying to think how I would think as an investor. And what it comes down to is that multiplayer games, when successful, are REALLY successful. So it's easier to justify such sums because "once it's released we'll be swimming in money!".

And video games as a whole are expensive to make, so such thoughts ought to enter the mind of any investor. A quick googling revealed that Bioshock Infinite* cost 100 million as well and was well received at the end of the day.

They also have additional monetizing options in free-to-play; maybe it can turn a profit that way?

*a game in a whole other genre that I suspect nobody here would question why they didn't cancel it if it cost so much.
 
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Dreiko

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So apparently they're refunding people who got that Concord thing now and I say good riddance lol. It'd have been nicer if they just invested this money on worthwhile projects in the first place of course. Like imagine if Sony made a 100 million buck Legend of Dragoon remake or sequel or something. It would definitely be way more successful on just nostalgia alone.
 

Old_Hunter_77

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I was listening to Easy Allies talking about how good the combat, mechanics, and gameplay of Concord are. I've also seen other reviews praising those aspects of the game.

Even I'm shocked at how quickly they're pulling this game even though we all knew this was going to fail by the marketing and initial reception. It is a shame that so much effort and skill went into this thing that was killed by truly some of the egregious marketing/business decisions I've ever seen.
$40 for what feels to be a f2p game is a baffling move in and of itself. Just cheap enough to remind you that it's not a "real" game but too expensive to just let people try it out, get into it, and build the player base it needs.

But I would love to see the Venn diagram of gamers who claim "gameplay is all that matters" while gleefully hating on this game that got good reviews for gameplay.
 
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Satinavian

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But I would love to see the Venn diagram of gamers who claim "gameplay is all that matters" while gleefully hating on this game that got good reviews for gameplay.
Good ? Reviews i have read mostly state that the gameplay is working but is in no way whatsoever innovative or an improvement over the competitors. Which already have an established playerbase and and (being longer around as life service) also more bells and whistles.

It is not a buggy mess, but it is just an inferior game in a competitive multiplayer environment. For a higher price.
 
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meiam

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They really should livestream the firing of the exec who pushed for this as an apology.

It's just crazy that from the moment it was revealed literally everyone knew it was going to bomb but somehow not one soul at sony could figure this out?

In other news, there's another live service hero shooter to come out today, does anybody care? At least its F2P.

Hows the ubisoft hero shooter doing anyway?
 
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The Rogue Wolf

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Holy shit that was fast!
I know everyone says "They put so much work into Hyenas; why didn't they just release it?" but I think this shows why. Sony could've saved everyone so much time and money by just flushing this piece of shit down the toilet without ever letting it see the light of day.

In other failing game news: So Ubisoft's confused Call of Duty clone XDefiant has dropped from an opening of eight million concurrent players to under twenty thousand. I guess that whole "hurray for no SBMM" sentiment just couldn't carry it.


There's an argument to be had as to which is the bigger failure: Concord, which started with nothing and managed to hang on to at least some of it, or XDefiant, which started with everything and lost it all?
 
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Dreiko

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I was listening to Easy Allies talking about how good the combat, mechanics, and gameplay of Concord are. I've also seen other reviews praising those aspects of the game.

Even I'm shocked at how quickly they're pulling this game even though we all knew this was going to fail by the marketing and initial reception. It is a shame that so much effort and skill went into this thing that was killed by truly some of the egregious marketing/business decisions I've ever seen.
$40 for what feels to be a f2p game is a baffling move in and of itself. Just cheap enough to remind you that it's not a "real" game but too expensive to just let people try it out, get into it, and build the player base it needs.

But I would love to see the Venn diagram of gamers who claim "gameplay is all that matters" while gleefully hating on this game that got good reviews for gameplay.
Sometimes even if the gameplay is fun, if you package it in a horrible enough aesthetic, it can actually ruin the experience for a lot of people. Take Marvel vs Capcom Infinite for example, there's a lot of cool things it does for the genre but because they abandoned the cel shaded look for a more realistic (ugly) look so it'll look more like the live action marvel films, the game totally failed and people still play marvel 3 which game out like 14 years ago by this point.

And that's with high level capcom devs in the process. Here we have a new untested studio that took 8 years to ape overwatch, so the gameplay isn't nowhere near that level of quality or refinement according to most reviews. And the aesthetic is actively more bad than infinite was too (mainly the capcom chars looked terrible, the marvel chars were passable).

It just wasn't meant to be, that's why only a few dozen people were playing the game when they announced it getting shut down.
 
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BrawlMan

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Sometimes even if the gameplay is fun, if you package it in a horrible enough aesthetic, it can actually ruin the experience for a lot of people. Take Marvel vs Capcom Infinite for example, there's a lot of cool things it does for the genre but because they abandoned the cel shaded look for a more realistic (ugly) look so it'll look more like the live action marvel films, the game totally failed and people still play marvel 3 which game out like 14 years ago by this point.
Speaking of which:

 
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Old_Hunter_77

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Sometimes even if the gameplay is fun, if you package it in a horrible enough aesthetic, it can actually ruin the experience for a lot of people. Take Marvel vs Capcom Infinite for example, there's a lot of cool things it does for the genre but because they abandoned the cel shaded look for a more realistic (ugly) look so it'll look more like the live action marvel films, the game totally failed and people still play marvel 3 which game out like 14 years ago by this point.

And that's with high level capcom devs in the process. Here we have a new untested studio that took 8 years to ape overwatch, so the gameplay isn't nowhere near that level of quality or refinement according to most reviews. And the aesthetic is actively more bad than infinite was too (mainly the capcom chars looked terrible, the marvel chars were passable).

It just wasn't meant to be, that's why only a few dozen people were playing the game when they announced it getting shut down.
Yeah that's all fair- and believe me I'm the last person to say anybody should play/watch/read/listen to anything because reasons.

I think what's bothering me is the mean, aggressive tone. It's not just that people didn't want to play it- of course they didn't, it's a free-to-play game you gotta pay for- it's the reaction like we're offended that this existed. Some posts here are even doing this. like HOW DARE THEY... release a game?! lol calm the f*** down, gamers. It's not just a failed game, it's a scandal.

There's also this annoying trend in pop culture fandom that everything is cringe or quip because, sure, we've been indundated with Marvel and a generation of creators whose biggest influence in dialogue writing is Joss Whedon. But now the backlash to that is so extreme where anytime a character makes a sarcastic comment the reaction is CRINGE. Everything is CRINGE so much that, I'm sorry- cringe is the real cringe (just like the most overrated word is "overrated").

Concord is that greatest offense to our sense since... Forspoken, according to the zeitgeist. Even though they, like so many games, are just mediocre, they are/were treated like war crimes. I do feel that sometimes we're throwing out the baby with the bath water and that good ideas, assets, mechanics might be getting lost, and then lamer cash-grab worse games get greenlit. Look how many franchises we love started off iffy then developed into something great- I mean it does seem like so many of our favorite games are sequels.
 
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