Since its launch, the discussion surrounding Concord has almost always been about its extremely low player base. On launch day, it didn’t even reach 1,000 concurrent players on Steam, and as I write this, its 24-hour peak concurrent player count is just 151.
All hopes are pinned on the PlayStation 5 version. People said they saw a lot of people with the PS5 logo next to their names in the game, suggesting Concord is doing a better job on Sony’s machine.
But a new report from IGN claims that Concord is also failing miserably on consoles. According to GameDiscover.co analyst Simon Carless, Concord is currently expected to sell “around 10,000 units on Steam and around 15,000 units on PlayStation.”
There are 25,000 copies in total. Based on the game’s suggested retail price of £34.99 (excluding the pricier Deluxe Edition), that’s approximately £874,750. Remember, Concord has been in development for 5-8 years.
Circana analyst Mat Piscatella also told IGN, “Concord ranks 147th among U.S. PS5 daily active players across all games, with less than 0.2% of active PS5 players playing the game on Monday.”
When asked why Concorde performed so poorly, Matt Piscatella pointed the finger at marketing. Circana’s PlayerPulse estimates that only a small percentage of potential customers are unfamiliar with Concord’s existence.
Other analysts have come up with various other reasons for seeing this as a real-time shooter entering a crowded free-to-play market. They also bring up the point that people have limited time and have already invested a lot in terms of time and money on other games, so they are only likely to be willing to do a new game if they can convince their friends to try it too Trying out a new game can be a daunting task. Oddly, none of them mentioned the almost universally panned art style, which was what initially put off the game’s first trailer.
As one analyst put it, “Concord should launch free games — or at least as part of a PlayStation Plus subscription — to get a fighting chance in its overcrowded genre.”
Just recently, there was news that another online game, Foamstars, will be available for free in October. Maybe that’s what Concord really needs to do to have at least some small chance of redemption. In fact, if the sales figures are true and the money recovered is so little, perhaps Sony should take the drastic step of refunding everyone who bought the game and immediately switch to a free-to-play model. Of course, it’s not that easy.
The game should have at least a few seasons of content in the pipeline, but with such a small amount, can Concord last long enough to deliver it?
