Lower than two weeks after it launched, Concord is dead.
Sony introduced this morning that the sport could be taken offline on September 6, and mentioned it’ll situation refunds to the few individuals who selected to purchase it. The team-based shooter was one among a scant few new first-party PlayStation video games scheduled for launch this 12 months. Sony launched it on each PS5 and PC on August 23. As for the size of its failure, the corporate would not sometimes reveal detailed participant numbers for its personal platforms. Nevertheless, Steam does. The numbers there usually are not fairly.
A Steam participant rely is not totally reflective of a recreation’s success, Nonetheless, it’s a key knowledge level from which we are able to extrapolate some assumptions. In its first weekend, Harmony failed to interrupt 700 concurrent gamers on Steam. That is a dismal determine for a fairly high-profile launch, particularly one from a serious writer.
For perspective, Galaxy Burger, an indie cooking sim I might by no means heard of that got here out on the identical day, had more than four times the variety of concurrent gamers on Steam (469) as Harmony (104) at one level on August 28. So far as a comparability for a supposed blockbuster from this 12 months goes, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League peaked at greater than 13,400 simultaneous gamers on Steam. That co-op recreation was a infamous flop that led to a $200 million loss for Warner Bros. Discovery.
As well as, Harmony has amassed 766 opinions on Steam on the time of writing. Some analysts estimate that every Steam evaluation interprets to between 30 and 50 gross sales. On the midpoint of the size, that may put Harmony‘s quantity of gross sales on Steam at round 30,000. Given its concurrent gamers by no means surpassed its disastrous opening weekend figures, that seems like a beneficiant estimate.
We do not have a robust thought of the gross sales numbers on PlayStation simply but, however its swift shuttering suggests issues weren’t a lot better. Both manner, it’s clear gross sales didn’t remotely come near protecting the event and advertising prices for a recreation that took Firewalk Studios (which Sony bought last year) eight years to make.
There are a bunch of explanation why Harmony simply did not seize folks’s consideration. I performed a couple of rounds throughout the open beta and thought it was so-so. The fight was okay and among the core concepts — resembling a cool, lore-filled map — have been attention-grabbing, nevertheless it felt like there was not sufficient novelty.
The primary wave of characters was bland, which isn’t ideally suited for a hero shooter when Apex Legends and Overwatch 2 (vastly more popular rival titles which are free-to-play) every have dozens of distinct, partaking personalities for followers to attach with. The affect of Guardians of the Galaxy is keenly felt, for higher or worse, which makes it appear much more like Firewalk and Sony chased after developments that have been widespread in 2016.
The most important mistake of all seems to be to be the value level. With gamers in a position to entry so many comparable video games with out paying a penny, having to shell out $40 for Harmony was evidently not an attractive proposition for the overwhelming majority of PS5 and PC house owners.
It is seemingly that we haven’t heard the final of Harmony. Sony says it plans to “discover choices, together with these that may higher attain our gamers,” which sounds so much like a free-to-play pivot.
And but, Harmony appears to solely be the one actual bitter word on what’s really been a quietly robust 12 months for PlayStation general to this point.
The Sony-published Helldivers 2 is the second-best promoting recreation within the US to this point this 12 months, according to industry analysts at Circana. Solely College Football 25 has bought extra copies within the nation. The truth is, Helldivers 2 is the fastest-selling game Sony has ever put out, with greater than 12 million copies sold in its first 12 weeks.
Opting to launch the sport on PS5 and PC concurrently paid off, as many of the preliminary wave of gross sales got here by way of Steam, per analysts. Nevertheless, the Steam participant rely has dropped off significantly in latest months, partially due to a controversial account-linking requirement.
Stellar Blade, one other Sony-published recreation from a third-party studio, acquired a generally positive response from critics and it’s doing nicely commercially too. Developer Shift Up estimated that gross sales topped 1 million models throughout the first two months and mentioned in June {that a} PC port was into account in consequence.
Sony’s technique of bringing its main exclusives to PC within the years following their PlayStation debut has been paying off over the previous few years. It is launched two considerably older video games on Steam this 12 months within the type of Horizon Forbidden West and Ghost of Tsushima. Each are wonderful, trustworthy ports that carry out nicely on my high-end PC in addition to my Steam Deck. They have been profitable sales-wise too, with the previous cracking the record of the highest 10 best-selling video games within the US in its first week. Ghost topped the general US recreation gross sales charts for Might general, per Circana, simply after Stellar Blade did the identical factor in April.
Sony has at the very least two extra blockbuster PC ports on the best way this 12 months. God of Warfare: Ragnarök will hit that platform on September 19. The earlier recreation bought greater than 2.5 million models on PC as of final February, per the major Insomniac leak, so the sequel appears primed to do nicely too. The Until Dawn remake is coming to PC and PS5 simply a few weeks later.
After which there’s the small matter of The Final of Us Half 2 Remastered, which arrived on PS5 earlier this year with an amazing new roguelike mode included. There is not any PC launch date but, however TLOU Day (Naughty Canine’s annual celebration of the sequence on September 26) is quick approaching. That looks like a main alternative for an announcement forward of the second season of the HBO adaptation debuting in 2025.
A cautious strategy appears clever for Half 2. Sony will need to make certain the PC port has nothing just like the kinds of technical issues Part 1 had when it arrived on that platform, so giving builders as a lot time as they want for polish is necessary.
Sony even has a pair extra first-party video games lined up for the final chunk of the 12 months. It won’t have to attend lengthy to clean off the stink of Harmony because the highly anticipated and completely adorable platformer Astro Bot lands on PS5 on September 6. Lego Horizon Adventures — a extra family-friendly tackle the Horizon sequence — is headed to PS5, PC and Nintendo Swap in a notable multi-platform debut this vacation season.
After which there’s the {hardware} facet of the equation. Within the first half of the calendar 12 months, Sony bought slightly below 7 million PS5s. That’s down from 9.3 million over the identical interval in 2023, however a dip’s to be anticipated at this level within the system’s life cycle.
How the PS5 stacks up in opposition to the competitors tells an even bigger story. Though Microsoft has lengthy saved quiet about what number of Xboxes it is promoting, earlier this 12 months some analysts pegged the ratio of PS5 to Xbox Collection X/S gross sales at more than five to one. Yeesh. Given Sony’s bigger set up base, it’s little marvel why Microsoft is more and more desirous to bring its first-party games to PlayStation.
In the meantime, at first glance, the PlayStation Portal appeared like an edge-case peripheral for the diehards. All it does is allow you to play video games from your individual PS5 remotely with out even supporting Sony’s cloud gaming service.
Nevertheless, the Portal has confirmed to be a stunning hit. Sony mentioned the machine, which was typically bought out for months, exceeded its expectations. It is the best-selling video games accent to this point this 12 months by greenback quantity, according to Circana. And rumors are swirling that Sony is “paying very shut consideration to the present handheld market,” maybe suggesting that the corporate is lastly able to work on a correct Vita/PSP successor. One can hope.
Even the beleaguered PS VR2 appears to have had an upturn in fortunes after a recent sale and the discharge of a dongle that lets house owners use it to play digital actuality video games on PC. In line with one report, the lower cost led to a sudden 2,350 p.c spike in gross sales. Sony could have even bought extra models in a single day (July 28) than it did within the earlier seven months general, in line with The Shortcut. Studies counsel that PS VR2 gross sales have been disappointing for Sony, however such a pointy improve (or something near it) could be astonishing. Together with the low cost, the additional utility of having the ability to use the headset for PC gaming absolutely helped, because the precise PS VR2 video games library stays pretty small.
There’s one different piece of {hardware} that would make 2024 much more of a barnburner for Sony: the extensively rumored PS5 Professional. For months, leaks have been suggesting {that a} mid-generation refresh is coming this holiday season. Rumors level to the PS5 Professional having the ability to ship larger speeds, quicker recreation rendering, improved graphics, higher ray-tracing efficiency and an 8K efficiency mode. Provided that Microsoft’s new Xbox variants both add inner storage, change the field’s shade or take away a disc drive, the PS5 Professional could appear to be an excellent tastier possibility for current-gen holdouts.
Replace, September 3, 3:15 PM ET: This text was initially revealed on August 28, six days earlier than Sony introduced it was taking Harmony offline. It has been up to date and republished to replicate that information.
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