With the betas for Concord having now come and gone we can now start to get a bit of a feel for the game. Two things have stood out for me from the outside looking in. One, the people that played it seemed to mostly enjoy it, and two, not that many people played it. So the question now is, what, if anything, does PlayStation do with the game moving forward?

For almost as long as I can remember anytime you hear about a first party PlayStation game it inevitably comes with a lot of excitement and anticipation from fans. Between the PlayStation 4 and 5 era I can probably count on one hand the amount of games that just had no buzz from the fanbase behind it and did poorly as a result. Concord appears to be headed for that list.

There’s likely a variety of reasons behind this. While I mentioned many that played it seemed to enjoy it there still were quite a few that didn’t. There’s apparent “woke” stuff going on at the studio (I hate this is even a thing but that’s a topic for another day I suppose). But I think ultimately it comes down to two things. Price and genre.

Since the dawn of time PlayStation has been trying to get that shooter in its portfolio to compete with the giants of the industry. Whether it was the 2000s/early 2010s with Killzone trying to compete with Halo or now with things like Concord and The Last Of Us Factions trying to compete with the Fortnite’s and Overwatch’s of the world. For whatever reason it just hasn’t clicked for them in that space, at least not to the level PlayStation has hoped for.

I think a big part of that is the PlayStation hardcore fanbase, the one that first party games cater to just don’t really want that type of game. They want the single player narrative driven experiences. It’s why they have a PlayStation. And the casual fans that are typically into games like Concord are happy with Fortnite and Call Of Duty. It’s a super competitive landscape. Especially when you are asking for $40.

Now $40 might not sound like much, and in the grand scheme of gaming it isn’t. But the space Concord is trying to enter is full of games that are free. So to break into that space and be a $40 game you better bring something special. It can’t just be good at that point. But what does PlayStation do at this point? Ride it out and hope it catches on or pivot? There is actually two fairly recent examples from PlayStation themselves to choose from.

Go Free To Play

Going free to play seems to be what most armchair publisher CEO’s think PlayStation should go this route and it makes a lot of sense. The space is full of free to play games and it’s the type of game that needs players to thrive. Announce that it’s coming to PlayStation Plus in August and hope you get more players.

PlayStation has never really been too keen on going free to play though. They’ve always talked about a premium experience and that comes with a price tag attached. However they did one time go this route when they see the writing on the wall. Destruction All-Stars was launched in 2021. The game was supposed to be a cheaper title but never free to play. However PlayStation saw the game wasn’t trending well pre-release and decided to pivot and offered it in its subscription service.

The move likely helped the game to a degree from a player standpoint and the game isn’t looked at like a complete disaster like it likely would have been if they stayed the course. It wasn’t an ideal situation but they did their best with it.

I think this is the easiest course of action to take with Concord. You might get a bit of egg on your face for making it free to play at first but if the game thrives a bit more than it’s ultimately worth it.

Stay The Course

Of course the other option is to simply stick with the current plan, release it at $40 and hope it takes off. We’ve seen multiple examples of games this year have minimal hype pre-release and completely blow up once the word of mouth begins to spread.

Both Palworld and PlayStation’s own Helldivers 2 didn’t have that much hype going into them. Both ended up seeing positive reviews followed by positive fan reception. People saw their friends enjoying these games and wanted to join them and they became arguably the two biggest games of the year.

Now I’m not suggesting Concord can turn into Palworld or Helldivers 2. While those games may not have had a ton of hype going into them they didn’t have nearly as much negativity around them either. But what I am saying is a game can always expand its base and grow if they get it right and enough people spread the word.

I’m sure PlayStation is discussing Concord internally and wondering what it should do as well. Whatever they decide they face an uphill battle, but don’t count out Concord just yet.