Sony on Concord Failure: “We Are Still in the Process of Learning”

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Between shipping 65.5 million consoles and recording strong software sales, Sony does have one noticeable blemish in its current fiscal quarter – the failure of Concord. It launched on August 23rd for PS5 and PC, reportedly selling only 25,000 copies. After two weeks, it was pulled from sale and servers taken offline.

Though Firewalk Studios said it was looking at feedback to improve the experience, Sony made the call to permanently shelve the title and shut down the studio. In a Q&A session following the company’s earnings, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki discussed (transcription via VGC) the title’s failure and how the studio is still “in the process of learning.”

“With regards to new IP, of course, you don’t know the result until you actually try it. So for us, for our reflection, we probably need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates. And then we need to bring them forward, and we should have done those gates much earlier than we did.

“Also, we have a siloed organization, so going beyond the boundaries of those organizations in terms of development and also sales, I think that could have been much smoother.

“And then going forward, in our own titles and in third-party titles, we do have many different windows. And we want to be able to select the right and optimal window so that we can deploy them on our own platform without cannibalization, so that we can maximize our performance in terms of title launches. That’s all I have.”

Prior to this, Sadahiko Hayakawa, senior VP for finance and investor relations, acknowledged Concord shutting down and Helldivers 2 becoming a hit. He said the company gained a “lot of experience and learned a lot from both.”

“We intend to share the lessons learned from our successes and failures across our studios, including in the areas of title development management as well as the process of continually adding expanded content and scaling the service after its release so as to strengthen our development management system.

“We intend to build on an optimum title portfolio during the current mid-range plan period that combines single-player games – which are our strengths and which have a higher predictability of becoming hits due to our proven IP – with live-service games that pursue upside while taking on a certain amount of risk upon release.”

Sony said it will release “major single-player titles” yearly after Ghost of Yōtei (which launches in 2025). It’s also making “steady progress” with new titles and improvements to its “live service game processes.” Sony has live service titles like Bungie’s Marathon and Haven Studios’ Fairgame$ in the works, but it’s yet to announce other big single-player titles. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.