The video game disaster that is Sony’s and Firewalk Studios’ Concord, just keeps getting worse as the game has reportedly lost Sony upward of $400 million—double the initial estimates that placed the loss between $100 million and $200 million. This supposedly makes Concord the most expensive video game loss that Sony has ever funded. To give you an idea of how bad this is, The Last of Us Part II, which was a massive success, had a budget of around $230 million. And now, Concord is not only shaping up to be Sony’s biggest video game disaster ever but perhaps the largest financial failure of all time within the gaming industry.
The news comes from insider Colin Moriarty, who shared the details on his Sacred Symbols podcast. In his Tweet below, Colin explains over the course of about nine minutes just how bad things are with the studio behind Concord, the game, and with Sony.
I spoke extensively with someone who worked on Concord, and it's so much worse than you think.
It was internally referred to as "The Future of PlayStation" with Star Wars-like potential, and a dev culture of "toxic positivity" halted any negative feedback.
Making it cost $400m. pic.twitter.com/F5O0oy4gaQ
— Colin Moriarty (@longislandviper) September 20, 2024
As you can see (or hear), Concord flopped so badly that it barely sold 25,000 copies (allegedly), generating only around $1 million in revenue—a sum that Sony promptly refunded after the game was pulled from storefronts within just two weeks of its release.
The removal came after Concord was met with overwhelming negative reception due to the art direction, the lack of innovation in the genre, and the alleged “social activism” that seemed to be at the forefront of the game’s design philosophy. Add this to the $40 price tag slapped on top of it and it was clear to literally everyone but Sony and Firewalk that this game was doomed. To put this in perspective even further, the game never broke 700 concurrent players on Steam at any given time and we hear things were just as bad on Sony’s platform, per capita.
To make matters worse, Concord’s development was plagued by what one source allegedly referred to as “toxic positivity” at Firewalk Studios, the developers behind the project. Moriarty explained that the staff were unable to address Concord’s glaring issues due to the higher-ups’ (either at Firewalk or Sony or both) unwavering belief that the game was destined to be “the future of PlayStation.” Oh boy…
Sony was so confident in Concord’s proposed success that it was envisioned as a franchise with “Star Wars-like potential,” according to the source Moriarty spoke with. Despite these grand expectations, the alleged $400 million spent on the game—which does not include the acquisition of Firewalk Studios—now stands as Sony’s largest-ever financial loss in gaming. To put that into perspective, Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 is rumored to have a budget of around $350 million, a figure still less than what was poured into Concord.
This follows yesterday’s coverage from Kotaku where it was reported that Concord’s director, Ryan Ellis announced he would be stepping down and moving into a support role. Previously, Ellis served under Bungie as the creative director for Destiny 2, another franchise plagued with troubles that ultimately cost Sony another fortune after purchasing Bungie for over $3 billion. I guess Sony’s latest business model is to burn as much money as possible and try to make it all back with the PlayStation 5 Pro’s $700 price tag.
The colossal failure of Concord is now being regarded as not only Sony’s biggest loss but perhaps the most significant disaster in modern video game history, potentially the greatest of all time and Firewalk Studios find themselves in an equally bleak position. Because, and let’s be real, after a $400m loss on their first game, we would be shocked if Firewalk Studios wasn’t immediately being considered to be shut down.
