New Concord Details Reveal a Higher Budget and Troubled Development

Video Games

Concord’s crash and burn is more devastating for Sony than initial reports suggested. If you haven’t been paying attention to this – I won’t say “If you haven’t played Concord” because about three people have played Concord – this game was supposed to be Sony’s darling release this year, a first-person shooter designed by Firewalk Studios, which Sony owns, that was the centerpiece of this year’s PlayStation State of Play. It looked kind of silly and cartoony, sort of like a Fortnite clone but with less distinction or personality, and the trailer and State of Play showcase didn’t excite anyone. Then came the character designs, which emphasized inclusivity and things like body positivity and came with listed pronouns, coupled with unearthed comments from Concord’s lead character designer about white privilege, which frightened off gamers looking for fun and escapism. (It probably didn’t help that Concord had an LGBT tag on its Steam store page. Bud Light is not just a lousy beer, guys; it’s a canary in a coal mine.) So, Concord was released, and it bombed, and Sony eventually took it offline, stopped selling it, and refunded anyone who had already bought it. It’s been a disaster for Sony, but now, two and a half weeks later, we’re beginning to learn just how bad. Colin Moriarty shared a clip from his podcast, Sacred Symbols, where he reveals some insider information about Concord:

I spoke extensively with someone who worked on Concord, and it’s so much worse than you think.

It was internally referred to as “The Future of PlayStation” with Star Wars-like potential, and a dev culture of “toxic positivity” halted any negative feedback.

Making it cost $400m. pic.twitter.com/F5O0oy4gaQ

— Colin Moriarty (@longislandviper) September 20, 2024

Whoa. That number actually makes more sense than the previous one. A while back, while discussing Sweet Baby Inc. and ESG in gaming, former Blizzard producer Mark Kern said that modern video games tend to be hugely expensive, with some costing as much as $600 million. Those early reports of Concord costing $100-150 million didn’t sound right to me; not to give the game too much credit, but it didn’t look cheap. And for a big company like Sony to completely pull the plug like it did, it had to be over more money than what was being reported. It is surprising, however, that it cost less than the Spider-Man games, which look phenomenal; I’d have figured they were on the higher end of video game budgets, and – despite my measured complement a couple of sentences ago – they look better than Concord. In fact, if Concord is the most expensive game Sony developed on their own or through a third party, that means it also cost more than God of War or God of War: Ragnarök, which… holy shit. Talk about a money pit.

The part about the game not being ready to release and needing its initial budget doubled and an extra year of development is absolutely ridiculous. Concord took eight years to develop; there’s no reason it should have been in a state like that after seven. This actually reminds me of Star Wars Outlaws; I wonder what they deemed the “minimum viability” was on that one. At least Sony attempted to fix Concord; that game was left in what should have been a very early testing stage. It’s even more surprising considering, according to Colin Moriarty, Sony saw this as essentially the face of their video game empire, likening it to Star Wars. With all that riding on it, why wasn’t someone from Sony at the studio to kick these people in the ass and get the game in shape? Instead, they had that “toxic positivity” atmosphere where nobody was allowed to be honest, which is astoundingly stupid. And why did they allow all this stupid woke crap into something that was going to be that all-encompassing for them? Granted, development started several years ago, and they didn’t know the backlash would be as big as it became, but still, why take the chance? You’d think they would fill Concord with very traditional heroes and villains, a bunch of fun and awesome characters gamers would want to become when they played, and maybe branch out later. Sony was asking for this loss.

Let us know what you think about Concord’s development in the comments!

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