The shooter Concord was supposed to be a huge success for Sony, but it was discontinued on Steam and PS5 after just a few days. A podcaster now claims that Sony lost much more money on this than previously thought.
Where does this number come from? Former IGN editor Colin Moriarty shared the alleged production costs of 400 million US dollars on September 20, 2024, in his PlayStation podcast Sacred Symbols (via X).
Moriarty claims that a person involved in the development of Concord reached out to him. He verified the source and is totally confident about it.
- Sony had high hopes for Concord, wanting it to become a franchise like Star Wars. They intended to revisit the universe repeatedly over the years and had numerous plans for crossover projects. The Amazon series Secret Level was just the beginning.
- Based on these high expectations, they invested 400 million US dollars in development. The costs for acquiring the Concord developer Firewalk were not even included yet.
- Internally, Concord was surrounded by a “culture of toxic positivity”: no one was allowed to criticize or doubt the game. Concerns, such as about the controversial character design, were thereby ignored.
The high sum, according to Moriarty, is due to the fact that Sony had already been working with the makers of Concord before acquiring Firewalk. When the shooter reached alpha phase in the first quarter of 2023, they had already invested 200 million dollars – although it is unclear how much of that money actually came from Sony.
At that point, however, Concord was in a “ridiculous state.” Sony had to invest another 200 million dollars to even be able to release it. A large portion of the development was outsourced to other studios.
If you want to learn more about the background of Concord, you can read the story of the Sony shooter here.
Concord had big plans for upcoming content, but never managed to get beyond Season 0.
Concord would have cost more than previous Sony hits
Is that realistic? The amount circulated by Moriarty seems almost absurdly high and should be viewed at least with a healthy dose of skepticism. To put the number into perspective:
- With a budget of 400 million dollars, Concord would be one of the most expensive games of all time and would have cost nearly as much as Cyberpunk 2077 including DLC and more than GTA 5.
- For Sony, the title would have been the biggest investment to date: more expensive than Spider-Man 2 and 3, The Last of Us Part II, and Horizon Forbidden West.
Spending so much money on a completely new IP would be … bold. The number also exceeds previous estimates by a factor: until now, even critical voices had estimated 250 million dollars, while conservative estimates were more around 100 million.
The estimates are based on the fact that a large number of well-paid people worked on Concord for 6 years. Screenshots from Firewalk employees show, however, that the shooter was still a vague idea in 2018, and in 2019, they were working on it with less than a dozen developers (via X).
While significantly more people were eventually involved in Concord, they were not paid throughout the entire development period. One can thus wonder where all the money went.
Into marketing – which often costs even more than development itself – presumably not, as relatively little had been heard about Concord beforehand. Here on MeinMMO, readers indicated that they only learned about the shooter’s failure through reports.
In the comments on X as well as a thread in the PS5 subreddit, hardly anyone can imagine that this amount is actually true.
Sony insiders doubt the numbers
Among the skeptics is Dev Walker, who has worked for Rocksteady, Respawn, and Sony’s Naughty Dog studio and is a representative of the BAFTA Games Awards. He writes on X that he does not trust the amount – not even if Sony outsourced large parts of the development.
Walker says he listened to the entire podcast and is personally familiar with the outsourcing costs at PlayStation. The numbers don’t make sense. The fact that the acquisition of Firewalk has not yet been factored in is for him the main reason not to believe the claims (via X).
What is certain is that it is not known how much Sony spent on the acquisition of Firewalk or invested in Concord. All amounts, whether estimates or supposed insider reports, are unverified and should not be considered facts.
Meanwhile, the game director of Concord, Ryan Ellis, has stepped down from his post and has moved to a supporting role. For long-time players, this means the farewell of an old acquaintance, as Ellis was the creative head of the best DLC in Destiny, now he is the face of Sony’s flop on PS5 and Steam
