During the latest earnings call, Sony President Hiroki Totoki first discussed the failure of the Concord . The game caused huge losses and led to the closure of Firewalk Studios. The experience, according to the company, served as an important learning experience for future projects in the live service games market.
Totoki highlighted the importance of a rigorous evaluation process, noting 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 launch. Furthermore, he emphasized the need to review the timing of these gates, indicating that, in projects like Concord , these assessments should have been performed much earlier.
“For us, for our reflection, we need many gates, including user testing or internal evaluations, and also the timing of these gates,” said Totoki.
Sony is in the learning phase when dealing with the live service games segment and seeks to define more careful processes to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
Sony and the impact of Concord's failure on game 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 closure of its servers a few weeks after launch. According to rumors, the development environment suffered from exaggerated positivity, making it difficult to perceive 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.
“Also, we have a compartmentalized organization, so pushing the limits of these divisions, both in terms of development and sales, I think it could have been much smoother,” said Totoki.
Comparison with the success of Helldivers 2
Sadahiko Hayakawa, vice president of finance at Sony, also shared thoughts on the contrast between Concord and another live service game, Helldivers 2 , which was successful. According to Hayakawa, the performance of both titles reinforces the importance of adjusting content and a gradual approach to scaling live gaming services.
“We released two games as a live service this year. Helldivers 2 was a huge success, while Concord ended up being shut down. We gained a lot of experience and learned a lot from both,” commented Hayakawa.
Concord and the Secret Level series
Even with the end of Concord, the title will be maintained as part of the Secret Level series, on Amazon Prime. This way, Sony will be able to partially benefit from 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 optimal window for launches on our platform, without cannibalization, to maximize our performance,” explained Totoki.
In conclusion, Hayakawa reinforced 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 game 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.
