Since it launched the discourse surrounding Concord has almost all been about its incredibly low-player numbers. On its launch day it failed to draw in even a 1,000 concurrent players on Steam, and as I write this its 24-hour peak concurrent player count is a meagre 151 people.
All hope rested on the PlayStation 5 version. People stated that in-game they were seeing a lot of people with the PS5 logo next to their name, suggesting Concord was doing far better on Sony’s machine.
But a new report by IGN claims that Concord is failing miserably on console, too. According to analyst Simon Carless of GameDiscover.co, Concord is currently estimated to have sold ” around 10,000 units on Steam, and around 15,000 on PlayStation.”
That’s a grand total of 25,000 copies. Based on the game’s RRP of £34.99 (and not counting the pricier Deluxe Edition) that’s around £874,750. Keep in mind, Concord has been in development for 5-8 years.
Circana analyst Mat Piscatella also spoke to IGN, stating that “Concord ranked 147th in US PS5 daily active players across all titles, with fewer than 0.2% of Monday’s active PS5 players playing the game.”
When asked about why Concord has done so badly, Mat Piscatella pointed a finger at the marketing. Based on Circana’s PlayerPulse, it was estimated that only a tiny percentage of potential customers even new about Concord’s existence.
Other analysts chimed in with various other reasons, touching upon it being a live-service shooter entering a crowded market of great games that are also free-to-play. They also addressed the idea that people have limited time and are already invested heavily in other games, both in terms of time and money, and thus might only be willing to try out a new game if their friends can be persuaded to try it as well, which is a difficult task. Oddly, none of them mentioned the art-style which has been almost universally panned and was what initially turned people off in the game’s debut trailer.
As one analyst said, “Concord should have launched free-to-play – or at least as part of the PlayStation Plus subscription – to have a fighting chance in its overcrowded genre.”
Just recently it was announced that another live-service title, Foamstars, is going free-to-play in October. Perhaps that’s what Concord does need to do in order to at least have some small chance of finding redemption. In fact, if the sales numbers are true and so little money has been recouped, maybe Sony should pull a drastic move by refunding everyone who has bought it and immediately shifting over to a free-to-play model. Of course, it isn’t quite that easy.
The game is supposed to have at least a few seasons’ worth of content in the pipeline, but with such low numbers, will Concord last long enough to deliver them?