It turns out, spending nearly a decade developing a game could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. According to new claims, the failed hero shooter Concord cost over $400 million to develop over its reported eight-year development cycle.
Colin Moriarty, formerly of IGN now on his Sacred Symbols podcast, spoke to someone who worked on Concord that he says he verified. As part of his talk with the employee — it wasn’t specifically mentioned if he was a developer of not — Moriarty was given some more details about the game and its poor launch.
“Up to the point that that game went into Alpha state, they had already spent about $200 million on it,” Moriarty said while mentioning that the game entered its Alpha sometime in the first quarter 2023.
Another large bit of information was that a “major piece” of the cost was outsourcing development to other studios in order to simply get the game out the door.
He then continued to say that his source told him that the game was being touted internally as “the future of PlayStation”.
“They had such major ambition for this game that it was referred to internally as a ‘Star Wars-like’ project for Sony,” Moriarty says, “that it can be repeatedly revisited over and over and over again.”
This, he says, led to a “toxic positivity” culture that caused any negative feedback about the game to be brushed aside. It’s said that people weren’t allowed to say “anything negative” about the game whether it be the characters, gameplay, or the like.
It was also restated that the game sold just about 25,000 copies.
While the information is certainly eye opening, it’s important to note that it all comes from just one source. Insider Gaming has reached out to PlayStation and Firewalk for comments on these claims.
This news comes a day after it was revealed that Concord’s game director, Ryan Ellis, was stepping down from his position to move into a “support role”.
What do you think of all of the news surrounding the development, launch, and shutdown of Concord, including a cost of $400 million to create? Let us know in the comments, and join the discussion in the official Insider Gaming Forums.
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