[HN Gopher] Sony shutting down Concord, refunds after 2 week lau...
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Sony shutting down Concord, refunds after 2 week launch. 8 year
dev, 25k sales
Author : IronWolve
Score : 50 points
Date : 2024-09-03 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| IronWolve wrote:
| Another shooter? Also "The War Within" wow expansion launched at
| the same time.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| That didn't go so well by wow standards. Paying extra to "avoid
| the late access" and the xp nerf after early access didn't go
| over well with the players.
| gigaflop wrote:
| People can only spend so much time on a Live Service style game.
| They aim to be "The game you log into daily", but usually only
| kids have the kind of free time to grind these out week after
| week, let alone keep up with multiple.
|
| Then, each have their own $10ish Battlepass, and you need to
| grind to get to the end of it. Aside from a new map or character,
| these are the bulk of 'new stuff' that gets added.
|
| Gaming as a Service doesn't scale well on most people who can
| afford to whale out, once they've already found their slot
| machine.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Yeah I remember doing nothing but playing video games,
| especially these shooter games, as a kid, but now I only play
| games rarely and they tend to be of the "avant garde" variety--
| meaning, they're often free or very low priced indie games from
| small developers (think of LISA, Undertale, Nikke Yumi, that
| sort of thing).
| tracker1 wrote:
| I have a little nerve damage, so it's hard for me to even
| play these kinds of games anymore. Combined with the fact
| that I like these kinds of games as it's usually been
| reasonable to drop in, play for a while, have fun and not
| dedicate a portion of my life to leveling up or mastery.
|
| For me, the peak in terms of time investment are around Q3A
| and Unreal Tournament. So it's been a long while since I
| played regularly. What's funny is I want to play, it just
| gets frustrating when your hands/fingers just don't respond
| right.
| pipes wrote:
| Q3 and UT are probably two of the best games ever made.
| They came at a really special time in games. Goldeneye goes
| in that list too.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Absolutely... I also played the original Team Fortress
| mod for Quake as well. Just a fun time to play in
| general. I think it was around Doom 3 that it was less
| fun to me. I mean, the more realistic looking
| environments (for the time) were really nice. And not to
| call out D3 in particular, just seemed that by then a lot
| of the fun in FPS games had waned a lot imo.
|
| It will be cool if GPUs can maybe double/triple current
| performance on the high end and that reaches mid-tier.
| The opportunity for really immersive environments. That
| said, we need more compelling gameplay and too many
| studios seem trapped in the exercise of trying to extract
| maximum value over a compelling story. I think some of
| the politics in games holds them back as well. Of course,
| I'm no longer the audience for reasons in my prior post.
| pipes wrote:
| I bought a steam deck, I play old sega racers (Daytona, sega
| rally, outrun 2, scud race) mostly due to only having a few
| mins of free time a day. Also dedicating large amounts time
| to games feels really wasteful given how little time I have.
| (I'm in my forties with two kids)
| mvanbaak wrote:
| And here I am, a 45 year old husband, developer and everything
| and have over 3k hors in Destiny ;)
| gigaflop wrote:
| If I tally up my total hours across games, it's just a
| difference of taste :)
|
| I stick to things that I can easily pick up or put down.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah but is that the only game you play? If so this is a
| typical amount of time to dedicate to a hobby or whatever,
| but an atypical time use pattern for gaming.
|
| If it's only one of many games you play idk. Depends on how
| your wife and kids feel about it I guess, none of my
| business.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I'm waiting for content in like 3 live service games at a time.
| I rotate between them when they get new stuff.
|
| I find some time nights and weekends.
| gigaflop wrote:
| If I'm gonna grind some multiplayer thing, I just prefer for
| it to be MtG these days. I can spend my week casually
| thinking of a decklist, and see how it performs with live
| players on the weekend. Still leaves decent time for Elden
| Ring or something.
|
| I've dropped maybe $500 on Valorant, but it takes too much
| mental energy for me to enjoy casually playing it anymore. I
| also don't want to rely on getting a full squad in order to
| have a good time.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > only kids have the kind of free time to grind these out week
| after week
|
| Adult will still have time to watch netflix, youtube or tiktok,
| read books, engagement bait on twitter etc.
|
| What these games are competing against is not "free time" but
| any block of 15min that would go to another activity.
|
| Given the number of people binge watching Netflix, it's a
| decent marketing segment.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Most games require a dedicated hardware device or beefier PC
| hardware. It is also easier to veg out on the alternatives
| than games which require more active engagement on the part
| of the player.
|
| All can greatly filter your audience vs doom scrolling.
| qwertycrackers wrote:
| Sure but the comparable idea with Netflix is like one show.
| You watch that show and then it's done. It took you maybe 8
| hours. This kind of game expects a player to log in week
| after week, dedicating hundreds and hundreds of hours over
| the course of years.
|
| But players who want to do that are already invested in other
| games. They're not going to split out time to play this new
| one unless it's amazing. This thing was $40 and not well
| regarded. No one is really surprised at this result.
| cheschire wrote:
| Well it launched up against Deadlock, another shooter by a
| company people actually know, and which dominated streams for a
| bit. If nobody plays your game live on launch, then you don't
| make sales.
|
| More info from LMG: https://youtu.be/7GzzatlUNtE
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| Concord is more of an Overwatch competitor, not much to do with
| Deadlock which is more FPS LoL. Overwatch is basically dead
| already, for reasons that Concord didn't seem to have tackled,
| so not sure what their plan was there...
| Dig1t wrote:
| There are tons of indie shooters that sold way better than this
| game, saying this didn't sell well because of a saturated market
| is just being dishonest. Read the actual reviews for the game and
| the reason it did poorly is glaringly obvious. The answer is not
| politically correct but it is true nonetheless.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Everyone I've seen actually review the game say the gameplay is
| just alright and the characters look pretty bad. Even if the
| characters looked like they were made by the overwatch team
| "alright" gameplay isn't going to sell for 40$ when literally
| all of your competition is free though.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Actually blaming it on the "politics" is also being dishonest.
| The game had 700 concurrent players on launch and then kept
| dropping all the way down to 60. Unless all but 700 of the
| gamers are caught up in taking ideological stances, there is no
| other explanation except that it was a mediocre game with
| unmemorable gameplay and characters that launched 8 years too
| late in a saturated genre with nothing new to offer.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Look at their submission history, this is clearly someone
| who's been successfully trained to see everything in life
| through that lens.
| Suppafly wrote:
| It's insane that they are giving up so soon. They released it
| with basically no advertising. Even if you ignore the real issues
| with the game, people not liking the character design, the live
| service aspect, etc. It's pretty obvious something like this is
| going to fail if they don't put any effort into hyping people to
| play it.
|
| I'm way more into gaming than a lot of people and the first I
| heard of it was headlines about the launch being so unsuccessful.
| blibble wrote:
| they didn't have anything to advertise
|
| the primary lure of overwatch always was the characters
|
| they were bright, colourful and attractive, almost magnetic in
| terms of drawing you in
|
| and they had something for everyone, and once you were in the
| gameplay kept you there
|
| meanwhile the characters in this game just look off
| Suppafly wrote:
| Sure, but there are other ways to market a game than
| character design, they didn't even attempt to market the game
| as far as I can tell.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| OW1 felt to me what Quake3 was when I was 13.
|
| You had a giant mech, could shoot like crazy and just cause
| total chaos. Different maps, and fun game modes.
|
| Until toxicity hit and the Blizzard blizzard.
|
| Maps were big and with a good team, it was a blast. Nothing
| else filled my void of Q3, now an dead genre.
|
| Deadlock is okay, but I'm not a MOBA person.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| I suspect they're not completely giving up, and will try to run
| it back with some minor tweaks as a free-to-play title in a few
| months. It's a time-honored failed-launch tradition and
| probably worth a shot once you let the bad publicity clear. I
| can't imagine it working well here though, you can't really fix
| bland bones with a some cheap touch ups, and free is not really
| a unique selling point in this genre.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| This game has been mired in some kind of controversy around over
| focus on social justice, aggressive responses from developers in
| response to critical reviews, and some other 'woke' criticisms. I
| find it strange that this is not mentioned in articles about this
| game being shut down. The social justice politics is very much a
| part of why this game did not attract gamers. I say that as
| someone who isn't especially keyed into these political battles
| normally.
| grawp wrote:
| It is not so strange. Game journalism is mostly completely out
| of touch with majority of gamers and often part of 'woke' echo
| chambers with their fallback usually being blaming things on
| review bombing and other problems.
|
| Fortunatelly we have free market.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I just got my auto refund for this from Steam.
|
| Looking forward to trying Deadlock. I hope _something_ pans out
| in this area.
| Terretta wrote:
| Hey, YALS!
|
| I liked that acronym: _yet another live service_ ...
| pixl97 wrote:
| Isn't it YALSF...
|
| yet another live service failure
|
| Failed, Another Live ServicE... FALSE
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| Inevitable. They launched at $40 when most of their competition
| is free-to-play.
| Sakos wrote:
| It didn't even seem like that bad a game. The gameplay looked
| solid and the people who played it largely liked it despite the
| generic characters. I was hoping to try it sometime with the
| assumption that they'd eventually give up on buy to play and
| make it free to play. I was right about the giving up part, I
| guess ...
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Is this accounting games at play?
|
| Does "releasing it", allow them to write-off the 8-year
| investment as a loss (but if unreleased, they can't recognize the
| gain/loss)?
|
| Just wondering if that's what's going on.
| iams wrote:
| no, they can write off the loss regardless of whether it's been
| released
| Havoc wrote:
| Heard about this from various social media angles.
|
| Surprised the math makes sense. Obviously this is a financial
| rounding error. Yet they're ok with me as random receiving around
| 3x negative messaging this week?
|
| Maybe the secret is association? Till this post concord and sony
| was not linked in my mind
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(page generated 2024-09-03 23:01 UTC)