Concord's Failure Was Expected to Cost Sony Fortune
Sony quickly buried any chance of resurrecting Concord. Apparently, if recent rumors are to be believed, the Firewalk studio's game was costing the publisher too much anyway.
Since yesterday we know that studio Firewalk won't be getting a second chance. As it turns out, Concord was a really expensive failure for Sony, although not as big as previous information would suggest.
Just a reminder: at the end of September, there were reports that the budget for Sony's new shooter game was over 400 million dollars. Some insiders considered this amount absurd, which is hardly surprising, since even a production like Marvel's Spider-Man 2 was said to have costed around $300 million. It's a more expansive title than the online shooter created by a smaller team (Firewalk supposedly employed 160 people, and Insomniac Games around half a thousand before the layoffs at the beginning of the year ).
"Over 200 million dollars" for starters
At first glance, information obtained by Kotaku seems to contradict these speculations. Partly, because according to the website's sources, the initial cost of development for Concord amounted to "over $200 million."
The catch is that no exact amount was given, and Kotaku emphasizes that these "200 million dollars" did not even cover Firewalk's entire work. Most likely, this also does not include Sony's purchase of the studio and brand.
Already 200 million dollars seems like an absurd amount. For context: Cyberpunk 2077 cost around $275 million to make (not counting later patching), and Sony’s two hits had budgets around $210-220 million. In other words, Sony spent roughly as much on Concord as it did on a high-budget single player game.
Excessive ambitions?
The official statement from the studio does not confirm these reports, but sheds some light on the possible factors that have significantly increased the development costs. Concord launched as a "new startup" during the pandemic, with a "new, customized FPS engine" and a transition from Unreal Engine 4 to UE 5, as well as 60 fps optimization on PS5 and PC.
All of this (plus mentions of "top-class gameplay" and "beautiful worlds" among others) indicates the creators' considerable ambitions, which could have translated into putting a lot of effort (and therefore: money) into the development of Concord.
What may seem bizarre is that even before the premiere, interest in the title was rather poor, which did not bode well for a game set to compete in such a competitive market as the de facto saturated sector of online shooters. Especially when most of the hero shooter competition is free to play, and Concord required purchase.
