In a recent breakdown from industry analysts, it was estimated that Concord – Sony’s floundering multiplayer shooter that was just released – may have only sold around 25,000 copies. It has been the talk of the town for several days, with Concord being released to a woeful reception and barely scraping up an all-time high player count of 697 users on PC.
At the time of publishing, just 82 people were playing Concord on PC, and an analyst from Circana mentioned that when the game was released, ‘fewer than 0.2% of active PS5 players’ were on the platform.
Failing To Take Off
In the figures handed to IGN, it was suggested that on Steam, around 10,000 copies of Concord had been sold, while on PlayStation, around 15,000 were estimated to have shipped.
Offering a key insight into the shoddy performance, Circana’s Mat Piscatella explained that Concord has ‘low awareness and purchase intent among video game players.’ Basically, nobody knows it exists and they don’t want to buy it if they do. With Concord being a new IP, it didn’t have an existing fan base to pick from, and starting from scratch needed an intense marketing campaign.
That just wasn’t there for Concord.
Even the first real trailers for the game only emerged at the end of May, giving players just a couple of months to understand the title before deciding if they wanted to invest in it. Unlike many other shooters making it to the market now, Concord has a premium price point, but free-to-play games are doing much better at present.
In a statement, Rhys Elliott of Midia Research explained:
A tight-knit group of players might be willing to take a chance on a new game for free, but paying $40 is a big ask in today’s macroeconomic climate. Launching Concord as a premium game limited its audience numbers and user acquisition. The more people who play a game, the more appealing it is. Network effects are crucial for building a healthy, engaged ecosystem.
Concord should have launched free-to-play.
What are your thoughts on the topic? Do you think Concord might have succeeded if it was released as a free-to-play shooter supported by a live-service operating model?
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I thought it was free? You mean 25,000 people actually paid to play this? That’s how many idiots there are in the world? Funny Sony still has more of these games on the horizon like Fair Game$ and the 10-15 live service projects at Bungie.