The latest live service venture Sony released to its PlayStation 5 and PC audiences seems to have fallen well short of the targets the publisher was expecting to hit. Coming out only months after the massive success that is Helldivers 2, this release by a Sony first-party developer, Firewalk Studios, has seemingly sold only around 25,000 units across all platforms. That"s according to analysts speaking to IGN in a new deep dive regarding the game"s launch performance.
“The Steam numbers are so bad that even without the exact data on the PS5 side we can be pretty certain that the game is doing very badly," says Omdia principal analyst Liam Deane. As many social media posts highlighted since the game"s launch on August 23, Concord"s Steam concurrent player count only reached a measly 697 at peak. A week later, current numbers are barely breaking over 100 players.
Analyst Mat Piscatella from Circana, using data from Circana"s Player Engagement Tracker, says “Concord ranked 147th in US PS5 daily active players across all titles, with fewer than 0.2% of Monday"s active PS5 players playing the game.” This data is from August 26.
Meanwhile, another analyst, Simon Carless from GameDiscover.co, says his estimates put Concord launch sales at 10,000 units on Steam and 15,000 on PlayStation. Concord is said to have been in development for around eight years before its release earlier this month. Despite it"s AAA status and Sony"s push behind it, the title received mixed reviews from critics at launch. Player reactions seems to be more positive when looking at Steam user reviews however, which sits at a 67% positive rating from just over 700 reviews at the time of writing.
According to the report, most analysts had agreed that the reasons for the lack of players are "poor marketing, a high price point, and most critically, a lack of differentiation in an oversaturated genre."
“Pivoting to live services is high-risk, high-reward venture, and the risk is heightening to levels that might not be worth it for many AAA console/PC publishers that aren’t already active in the space,” explains Midia Research analyst Rhys Elliott.
Concord currently costs $39.99 to purchase. The analyst added that launching as a free-to-play experience, like most of its competitors, or at least offered as part of PlayStation Plus could have saved the launch experience.
The game"s first season is slated to kick off sometime in October, bringing a new character and a map to the hero shooter alongside a microtransactions shop for purchasing cosmetic items.
Source: IGN