During the latest conference call regarding financial results, Sony president Hiroki Totoki discussed for the first time the failure of the game Concord . The game caused significant losses and led to the closure of Firewalk Studios. According to the company, the experience served as an important learning opportunity for future projects in the live service games market.
Totoki highlighted the importance of a rigorous evaluation process, emphasizing that the failure to detect problems during development was one of the reasons for the game's closure. He explained that Sony needs to implement more evaluation "gates," such as user testing and internal reviews, to identify flaws and adjust designs before release. Furthermore, he stressed the need to review the timing of these gates, indicating that, in projects like Concord , these evaluations should have been conducted much earlier.
"For us, for our reflection, we need many gates, including user testing or internal evaluations, and also the timing of these gates," Totoki stated.
Sony is in a learning phase when dealing with the live service gaming segment and is seeking to define more rigorous processes to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
Sony and the impact of Concord's failure on its gaming strategy
The launch of Concord was a significant investment of US$200 million. However, the game did not achieve the expected success, leading to the shutdown of its servers a few weeks after launch. Rumors suggest the development environment suffered from excessive positivity, hindering the identification of problems and limiting critical feedback. Despite this, Totoki believes that the lessons learned from this project will contribute to improving Sony's strategy in future releases.
“Furthermore, we have a compartmentalized organization, so pushing the boundaries of those divisions, both in terms of development and sales, I think could have been much smoother,” Totoki stated.
Comparison with the success of Helldivers 2
Sadahiko Hayakawa, Sony's vice president of finance, also shared reflections on the contrast between Concord and another successful live service game, Helldivers 2. According to Hayakawa, the performance of both titles reinforces the importance of adjusting content and a gradual approach to scaling live game services.
“We launched two games as a live service this year. Helldivers 2 was a great success, while Concord ended up being shut down. We gained a lot of experience and learned a lot from both,” Hayakawa commented.
Concord and the Secret Level series
Even with the end of Concord, the title will be kept as part of the Secret Level series on Amazon Prime. In this way, Sony will be able to partially recoup its investment in the project. Totoki also highlighted the need to maximize the performance of each title released, avoiding internal competition between games released close to each other.
“We want to be able to select the right and ideal window for launches on our platform, without cannibalization, to maximize our performance,” Totoki explained.
In conclusion, Hayakawa emphasized that Sony wants to disseminate the lessons learned from the Concord and Helldivers 2 , thus benefiting all of the company's studios in both single-player and live service projects. The company seeks to develop a balanced portfolio that combines the predictable success of established IPs with the risky growth of new live titles.