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Rumour: Concord Cost $400 Million, Sony Believed It Was the 'Future of PlayStation'

Allegedly Sony's most expensive first-party game ever

by · Push Square

We promise we’re not trying to rub it in, but Concord is such a historic flop that some of these stories simply can’t be overlooked. Speaking on the latest episode of Sacred Symbols, veteran ex-IGN reporter Colin Moriarty said he’d spoken to a developer on the first-person shooter, and claims the game cost approximately $400 million, making it the most expensive PlayStation first-party project ever. That’s an astounding, bordering on unbelievable, number if accurate.

Moriarty claims that Firewalk Studios had spent around $200 million at the start of last year, prior to Sony’s acquisition of the developer. The title was originally being funded by Probably Monsters, with PlayStation signing on as a publishing partner. It’s unclear, then, how much of that original $200 million had come out of the platform holder’s pocket.

However, when it acquired the studio and took full control over the project, it allegedly spent a further $200 million getting the title ready to release. According to Moriarty, the game was in a disastrous state as recently as 18 months ago, with no player onboarding or monetisation designed. Outsourcing was required to get the project into shape, and to be fair, what did release was relatively polished – albeit extremely barebones.

Moriarty explained: “It’s the biggest game Sony’s ever released from a budgetary standpoint from a first-party. There are games in development at PlayStation first-party that are more expensive from a budgetary standpoint, but as of the games that have come out so far, like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, this game cost more. And they lost all of it.”

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He then goes on to explain why PlayStation spent so much on the game: “It was heavily championed behind-the-scenes. The term had been used verbatim behind-the-scenes that ‘Concord is the future of PlayStation’. This game was referred to internally as a Star Wars-like project for Sony. It was designed to be repeatedly revisited, not just in games but in cross-media; we’ve seen little bits of that like the weekly stories and the inclusion in Amazon’s Secret Levels.”

According to Moriarty, a sense of “toxic positivity” pervaded the project. “You weren’t allowed to say anything internally about this game, about how something’s wrong with it or how the character designs aren’t right,” he claims. “This was Hermen Hulst’s baby, apparently. He internally was a massive champion of the game.”

He concluded that he’s “totally solid” on his source, with Kotaku’s Ethan Gach corroborating some of the story. Moriarty goes on to admit even he was surprised by some of the numbers being thrown around here. “I was saying it cost nine figures probably, like low $100 million. But I thought there’s no way it cost $200 million. Actually, it cost $400 million – and that doesn’t even include the price of acquiring the team!”

Assuming all of this is accurate, then it’ll be interesting to see what this means for PlayStation moving forwards. We suspect Hulst will be under unfathomable pressure, as he’s the one leading the PS Studios charge and has allegedly cost his company hundreds of millions of dollars here. While he’s been promoted to co-CEO alongside hardware boss Hideaki Nishino, Concord falls under his remit – and we suspect he’s going to have a lot of explaining to do to his higher-ups.

[source x.com]

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About Sammy Barker

As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.

Comments 193

I mean, assuming all this is true, this is just staggering information.

If this is true, PlayStation are so unbelievably out of touch that I'm genuinely concerned for the future of the brand.

Hulst has no idea what he's doing. How he even ended up in his current position is bewildering.

That’s cap no way that game cost 400 million dollars

@Malaise Yeah, I want to know what this means for Hermen Hulst. Because if this was his baby, as reported, and he was selling higher-ups on this game being the future of PlayStation, only for this outcome... Like, geez! He must be in so much hot water I can't even begin to imagine.

I honestly don't believe it cost anywhere near 400 million

If true, this is truly shocking and disheartening to read. I imagine all of the smaller and more genre-varied games we could have gotten this gen being thrown in the trash in favor of this and it puts my long-time support of PlayStation into an existential crisis. Dramatic, I know. But....damn......

Hulst parading Concord around as "the future of PlayStation" and a "Star Wars level IP" is pure insanity.

@get2sammyb makes you miss Shu.

Sometimes we make bad Gambles, sometimes that bad gamble is an obvious bad gamble.

I mean, the studio employs 150 people, so unless they pay them all 500K a year then I'm not sure what they spent the money on 😂

Also Sony didn't even buy them until last year so where did this independent studio get all the money from in the first place?

The acquisition was undisclosed, so if it cost $300 million and then the game cost $100 million to develop, then you could say it cost Sony $400 million but I highly doubt the game itself cost that

Yeah sorry but I don't believe this. These stories are just getting more outlandish. 400 million for that? Come on.

This just proves there is a MASSIVE disconnect between the people running the ship and the consumers.

Seems like people who are completely out of touch with gamers are currently calling the shots and it shows.

@RBMango you mean those games like concrete and dreams that really didn't take off with support like Sony hoped...

@get2sammyb @Americansamurai1 Agreed. Shu, Andrew House, and Shawn Laydon did not have perfect records, but they were way more competent at assessing quality than the clowns now running the show at PlayStation.

I trust Colin more than anyone else. It's insane they spent more than The Last of Us 2 on this thing

I prefer solid facts over "I heard it from" statements from some bloke on a podcast or X post.

I for one don't believe this game cost near the same as TLOU Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West combined ($220 million each).

To quote Like a Dragon director Horii Ryosuke: "If there's no healthy fighting during development, you can only make a lukewarm game at best".

@Cutmastavictory Concrete Genie and Dreams were before PS5 and Sony sent those out to die.

If true, just more proof that Hermen Hulst should have gotten the boot alongside Jim Ryan.

Such an abject failure of vision and management. How was this allowed to carry on so long with no one recognizing the catastrophe brewing. Between this and Bungie it’s pretty clear Sony has lost its way. I hope they are able to turn the ship around.

Well, we are starting to see why Jim Ryan left the building. The hole Bungie situation. Now this. 12 live service projects, reduced to 6, no showcase this year. We are feeling this ***** and it' ain't over yet I'm afraid...

@carlos82 Probably Monsters were funding them before Sony acquired the studio. Moriarty also says outsourcing was required to finish the game, which could have rocketed the cost.

But yes, it's still an extraordinarily high number being thrown around.

400 million and doesn't even include the price of the studio? I always assume 100 million was low. 8 years (albeit not in full production) with a giant staff in an expensive place to live/work. But that's astounding

I am a huge Concord critic but this is not true lmao

400 million dollars WITHOUT the price of acquiring Firewalk included in that figure?

Yeah that’s absolute baloney, I’d say it’s probably what every other insider said, 200m.

@UltimateOtaku91 While I understand your scepticism, it'd be unethical for him to name his source.

Let's see what else is reported.

There's no f'ing way. I'd need to see proof of this from verified sources. Impossible that level of slop cost $400 mil to make and even more impossible to believe that anybody with a functioning brain cell would've seen it and said 'this is the future of video games.' No way.

They weren’t completely wrong. Concord was Sony’s “Disney Star Wars” and let’s leave it at that.

Did anyone see much advertising for this game? Because I don't remember seeing much, and there's no way you send out a $400 million game without getting it seen everywhere first, surely?

Yeah this sounds like a load of bull.
Sony didn't even get involved until 2021 so unless Probably Monsters and its investors spent $200 million on it before Sony got involved then I think I think it's a load of crap.

$200 million for those 3 years Sony was involved would be more believable.

Totally agree toxic positivity is becoming a huge problem. Any criticism is now seen by some as "hate". This means improvements badly needed are quashed right out of the gate and then when the market gets its hands on the product it's a disaster. This isn't just a problem in video games but in culture as a whole. Glad others are speaking out about it

It certainly did shape "The Future of Playstation" just not in the way they had hoped

@get2sammyb That's the thing, would Sony ever report how much h they spent on this game? And if not then anyone can go round throwing absurd figures without anyway to prove them wrong. Also if it is true then wouldn't this be the most expensive game made to date outside of GTA?

If the numbers are as high as claimed, we should see a major hit to profitability of the gaming division in Q3 results when they are out in November.

Wait? SIE conned by Bungie... Twice?! 😪😪😪

As soon as I read "the studio's Bungie roots" everything seemed to make sense for a moment. Whatever the real cost... it's how they *con*vinced Sony to give up all that money that is the real problem.

Marketing costs, hours of motion captured story bits, outsourcing…all very expensive. IF this report is true, I don’t see Hulst having an extended future in his current position, and that’s without knowing how much Factions cost Sony either.

Frankly, part of me hopes this is true. This level of failure will be hard to ignore, even for out-of-touch corporate suits. I don't champion people losing their jobs, but at the point we are now the only option might be to burn everything to the ground and start anew.

@8bit4Life Not true as even Disney Star Wars era made some money at first lmao

Sorry to say but if Hulst really thought Concord was the future of PlayStation he should not be the future of PlayStation

@get2sammyb
It might be unethical but these are ridiculous numbers and it seems like Moriarty, who runs what has been my favorite gaming podcast, seems to have pulled this straight out of his backside just to create discussion. He has to have solid proof of that outlandish number and report it immediately. If not, his credibility is 100% out of the window. He's been saying some dumb stuff in general lately.

I think this explains why the Sony CFO came in as the President of PlayStation and said in an earnings call that the developers needed to learn how to make money (I’m paraphrasing) and shut a bunch of things down.

As for the neigh sayers, if you read the entire thing or watched the clip in the tweet from Colin, you’d understand why this game was so expensive and why they shut it down so quick

There’s surely no way it’s that high. Surely…?

@get2sammyb Definitely. If there's truth to this then whatever happens to Firewalk, Hulst really needs to share the same fate - if they're laid off then his metaphorical head needs to roll with them, and if they're reshuffled to support other teams, he needs to be bumped back down to a creative/support role too. If there's one thing that seems to have been made very clear about Hulst in all of this, it's that he's not cut out for that level of executive, financially-responsible role, and likely never was.

I wonder if it’s actually 400million during its (intended) lifetime.

Much like they expect Gta6 to be 2billion across its lifetime.

@Gamer83 I mean he's saying his source worked on the game and he seems confident in it. The Kotaku reporter has also corroborated the "toxic positivity" bit (not the budget).

Perhaps he's mistaken and the $400 million includes the purchase of the developer, too. But he explicitly states in the video that's not the case.

If true, this is obscene for so many reasons because it shows how out of touch Sony has become with its customers. How on earth they championed this as the future of playstation I do not know.

I don't see how Hermen Hulst can come back from this. That is a massive error of judgement.

Sony has always been successful in its merger and aquisition strategy because it targeted companies it had worked closely with for years, and were aligned to the company ethos - take Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Housemarque etc.

The purchase of firewalk, and to an extent Bungie made no sense because those aquisitions represented a complete departure from their usual approach. It's no wonder that this ended up a disaster for all involved.

A dark period in Playstation history this.

I could have my Uncharted 5 with millions left over for that.
Saved Sony millions and they would have made money in Uncharted 5.
They are dumb nuts

Talk about pure f**king hubris and mismanagement. 😂

PS HQ should've stayed in Japan.

@get2sammyb Holy sh*t! If I were Sony I would fire Hermen Hulst. If I were Sony I would create more teams like Asobi as Nintendo also has small teams and have hit after hit. These bloated game studios are not viable it seems

EDIT: as a CPA (now consultant in M&A) this would be the most easily identified impairment ever 🤭

If this is true, then not only is leadership to blame, but so are the developers. It is unfathomable the level of waste that was going on at every level of Firewalk. 8 years and $400 Million with a broken product as of 18 months ago shows that. Obviously no one deserves any hate, but it should be learned from. Sony and Hermen need to do better.

But will Hermen Hulst renounce his yearly bonus?

@get2sammyb
He can say what he wants and mention all the unnamed sources he wants but looking at that game it certainly doesn't seem like a $400 mil project. Advertising does factor in and I'd be more inclined to believe this if it was marketed like God of War but even that didn't happen.

Maybe I'm wrong but this seems like attention seeking. Possible he thinks his podcast is slipping into irrelevancy as it doesn't pull the numbers that others do.

Surely, they are including the price of acquiring the studio in that, but maybe not. The game has been in development for eight years, which is why it presumably seemed like the game was designed for eight years ago.

That's even more than I thought it would be. I was thinking in the 200-300 million range. But if this is true, this game would probably be the biggest entertainment industry flop of all time.

@The_Wailing_Doom No, this is without acquisition costs according to Colin.

I'm sure the game is fine...it's just there are so many of these games ..and most of them are free aswell...so trying to charge for it in the first place wasn't a great idea

Hulst needs to step down. This is insane. 400M for that turd of a game, yet any ask for a return of a beloved character gets pushed to the side. The ps5 pro price and all this other news makes me worried about Sony.

@get2sammyb perhaps, in any case it's been a monumental catastrophe for Playstation

That is an appalling waste of money

@Sanquine
I trust Colin, but that figure seems unbelievable.

This is a major win for gamers. These big corporations need to be shown that they are only as successful as we allow them to he. Serve us slop and we'll happily get the shovel.

source or I don't believe it

“You weren’t allowed to say anything internally about this game, about how something’s wrong with it or how the character designs aren’t right,” he claims. “This was Hermen Hulst’s baby, apparently. He internally was a massive champion of the game.”

I'm not surprise when the character designer called people who dislike Concord as talentless freak.

But it's confirmed that Concord is really Hermen Hulst baby. No wonder he boast the game as if it is a masterpiece.

And if the $400 million cost is true then that's more money than TloU 2 or Spiderman 2 devs cost and what Sony got is a game with lesser quality that no one buys.

Heck, $400 million can funded multiple Astro Bot, Wild Arms, Gravity Rush, Patapon, Arc the Lad, Alundra, Dark Cloud, or any dormant IP's from Sony catalogue!

I think big chance Hermen gonna lost his job or he definitely lost a lot of trust from Sony shareholders and higher ups.

I'm not even surprised if Sony shareholders already voted to kicked Hermen out of SIE CEO chair started with new fiscal year.

@zimbogamer
I'd be more concerned for Sony if they sold the PS5 Pro at a loss.

A London based studio could be really expensive. The same project located in Poland or Czech republic could cost the half amount of money.

This is terrifying information. You can't expect a publisher operating on PlayStation's scale to ensure that every single first- and second-party project will be a financial and critical hit. That's simply unrealistic. But PlayStation came pretty damn close to it during the PS4 era. Major economic and critical failures were rare.

But ever since Jim Ryan's misguided gaas initiative PlayStation has been getting close to Xbox-level mismanagement.

Last of Us Multiplayer - cancelled
London Studio - project cancelled and studio shut-down
Twisted Metal - cancelled
Bungie - 3.6 billion to buy a severely mismanaged studio
Concord - 400 million down the drain, studio closure likely

I sincerely hope they learned from this. Fingers crossed.

Absolute insanity, heads should roll.

Hulst needs to go he's absolutely destroying this brand his tenure has been an immeasurable disaster get rid of him and good god MAKE PLAYSTATION JAPANESE AGAIN!!!!

I can tell you where those $200M came from, but don't want to be banned again for truth. 🙂

Concord is slap to Sony's face from customers. If they don't LISTEN now, than we don't know what to do. Maybe stop supporting Sony at all... maybe we'll really see another fall of gaming industry.

@zebric21 unfortunately...

@carlos82 Hasn't this game been in development since 2016 though? Eight years of wages changes that calculation a lot.

Utter nonsense. The studio was only about 150 people, that’s small for AAA standards.

All the discourse around this game is utter garbage, just like it took 8 years to develop when the studio was only founded in 2018. It was probably only 3-4 years of full development and would take years to even get the staff count up to 150.

@UltimateOtaku91 This guy has been in the business a really long time so I think calling him some bloke is probably off base. I reckon this takes into account them buying the studio as well.

@UltimateOtaku91 Colin is about as trustworthy a gaming journalist as there could be. He says his source is solid. So its not just "heard it from some bloke". Your statement looks foolish.

@ChrisDeku 5 years is still a long time to be working on this.

Always had a bad about Hermen, ever since he revealed Horizon with its semi-ugly protagonist.

FYRE festival of gaming.

Chernobyl was less of a disaster than Concord

“You weren’t allowed to say anything internally about this game, about how something’s wrong with it or how the character designs aren’t right,”
This really explains so much 🙄😂
They definitely knew and
was aware of this mess🤮

Are we sacking anyone over this.

This is insane.

That's so much money to pump into a game, and the lack of any criticism within the dev team is just a setup for disaster.

@FatalBubbles Colin said on the show this does NOT include cost of buying studio.

@ChrisDeku Working on a AAA budget live service in Washington state for five or more years would be comically expensive.

That sounds like sensational nonsense sorry. Because it is/was a big story some troll has put it out there that's it's Sonys most expensive game ever .
Let's look at some quick facts, firewalk has a headcount of 179 people at it's peak, insomniac 450, santa Monica 250, ND 450, polyphony 300 etc etc
Also sony did not own or pay for development of this game until several years after development.
There's more but I can't be bothered cause it's likely sensationalism and it's more likely including the cost to BUY THE STUDIO

It's insane to say the least. How in God's name this took over $400 million to make is simply unconscionable. I believe Collin though. He doesn't just throw stuff out there.

I really wish I could have been a fly on the wall during the meeting when Herman was just head over heels for this game. Just what the heck did he see in it?

@FatalBubbles Honestly never heard of him before especially as I don't really follow podcasts or X posts etc. Just find it hard to believe this game cost in the same region as Sony's two most expensive games combined, which both also had bigger marketing as well.

It’s unbelievable that Sony is heading towards disaster. I wish for a second gaming crash at this point, as only Nintendo is still doing what they always knew (constant stream of good games). Microsoft and Sony fatcats are too greedy and busy snorting whatever fairy dust they have in their lavish offices, while destroying gaming.
I’d say that I don’t even think of buying another PlayStation in the future, as I thought that getting a PS5 early on in its life would mean benefiting from the next-gen games. However after 3 years I feel heavily burnt out. I bought more games for Switch or retro consoles (PS1 & PS2) than for PS5, because the output is not very appealing to me

Windows vista failed but with many updated and different name succeeded, I believe this game need to change the characters design and different name and free to play and give it a new try.

@LifeGirl well the studio itself is 6 years old, but even if we assume all 150 staff have been there for 8 years working on this and an average wage of 50K a year, that comes to 60 million. Still leaving us 340 million to account for

To think we could've gotten Twisted Metal and Factions 2 over this. Not to mention funding if studios like London and Pixelopus weren't shut down.

For comparison GTA 5 cost $265 million to develop and market. That includes music licensing, Mo cap, tonne of voice actors, the online mode and that was for 5 years of development.

I liked Hulst during the PS3 era when they were pushing boundaries of the hardware with KZ2 and 3

But it seems like after HZD, they just went all in for some reason on that franchise which didn't make sense to me. And now the guy is leading all PS studios. Strange series of promotions for that guy.

This didnt fail just because of character design etc - it could have fantastic and still failed - it failed because nobody wanted a live service game from Sony.

> $200 million for those 3 years Sony was involved would be more believable.

@MrMagic but that’s exactly what the article says. Like verbatim: “when it acquired the studio and took full control over the project, it allegedly spent a further $200 million getting the title ready to release.”

@Rich33 So why didn't HellDivers 2 fail?

Enough to remake Bloodborne and make a sequel. Sony is imploding at this point.

So it was Hulsts baby then? Unbelievably out of touch. He should step down for this in my opinion.

Hooolyyy fuuudge. They bet the bank on a game that didn't survive 2 weeks. No wonder they're nickel and doming everyone, they lost their shirts on the worst gamble ever. This makes Redfall look good.

What's even more troubling is hearing they have games that cost more than this in the works. $300M on Spiderman was too much. $400M on this was beyond belief. They should not be spending more than that, and should be spending less than that on video game production. What is WRONG with them spending that kind of money on volatile products that can sink or swim? Do they not have any kind of grounding on what acceptable risk is for these investments? Do they believe themself above failure? That is not at all how Sony used to make games and hit the top. That's how Activision made games, and all that got them was bought out.

More and more I feel like Sony Pictures took over SIE at some point and they're running their games division like their film studio. Only even more expensively.

I'm not sure why people are skeptical the game would have cost and been managed this way though. These guys are Bungie spinoffs. This is the exact SAME hot water Bungie is in.

I said in the beginning Hulst needed to go with Ryan, and I'm now starting to wonder if Hulst needed to go BEFORE Ryan rather than just take up his seat.

🤔... yet Sony barely paid for marketing. If you are internally excited for years that "Sony's future project is in development", maybe share that hype with the only people that matter in business...the consumer. They obviously decided to blow their load on a potential Fortnite killer "😂" and failed. Stick to your base, stick to what you do best, stick to selling multiple millions of single player based software experiences. It's why so many of us are here.

Some mistakes are expensive. Hopefully they learned a life long lesson.

Toxic positivity.

Same thing that surrounds Vladimir Putin by the sounds of it.

$400 million!??!! That moment of realisation that led to the curtains coming down so soon after release must have been a real sickener for Hulst. I wonder who gave such a massive directive and where the red line was that made it be called?

Not surprising tbh after sony buying bungie to help either live service games: in my opinion the worst live service game, destiny where it's the exact same activities for the last almost ten years , would have been better with square enix, finsl fantasy 14 while flawed has really turned its fortunes around. I really hope sony learns from this

I bet Marathon and Fairgame$ also cost a lot. Not surprise if both games combine could cost the same as Concord or even more.

Hermen possibly are sh*tting brick right now lol. Concord became a catastrophic failure with $400 million turn to dust and there's a chance Marathon and Fairgam$ could follow Concord fate.

But i forgot Helldivers 2 sold really well (12 million copies iirc). Maybe the only thing along with Horizon FW that keep Hermen's safe for now...

@OldGamer999 If it's true then someone is definitely getting sacked, that's a lot of money to waste and then there's the money spent on years of development on TLOU Factions. I think after Fairgames and the Horizon Multiplayer game Sony will abandon the Live Service push and focus on single player games (apart from Bungie)

I think a better strategy would be to get third party developers making online games and then acquiring them if it becomes a hit, like Arrowhead for example. They should give someone the Killzone, Resistance or Motorstorm IP to make a live service game.

Hulst must have been so high anytime he did any work related to Concord.

I guess they trying to get the money back by selling ps5 pros for steep price

SIE, believes live services was the future of their platform, bro...they need stop drinking alcohol there in japan

Welp should've bought Square Enix instead of Firewalk Sony lmao

Please tell me this is a joke, both the budget and Sony thinking that

Edit: Ok only now saw the source, so can't be taken serious anyway

Didn't someone also said that Jim's GaaS initiative wasn't his but Hulst's? If true then this guy needs to go.

@KillerBoy
Also don’t forget the PS5 Pro anniversary bundle that you can’t buy as the console in its own.
And have to have the edge controller and not a common sense disc drive bundled instead.

They are really pushing their luck with me Sony and I’m such an arse just like I left Xbox last month, Sony are starting to make their way onto my hit list.

“ was designed to be repeatedly revisited, not just in games but in cross-media”

Well, that would explain why it was so “inoffensive” (crap). If true anyway.

@UltimateOtaku91
Sony are pushing their luck with me lately.
The arse I am like I left Xbox last month Sony are working their way slowly to the top of my hit list now.

Hulst has a serious problem since he takes thing personally. If he personaly likes it, it's good. If he doesn't, then it's dead. He didn't like Days Gone so it was dead. Doesn't matter it sold over 8 millions copies, he just didn't like it. He needs to be fired since he lacks professionalism.

No way this is true, this is just people sticking the knife in.

There’s no way they could have ever spent that amount of money on this game.

"The future of Playstation" is so damn accurate because the company for gamers is getting worse and worse.

There might not be a future for Sony in gaming and if they continue this trend then so be it... 5 Generations is enough.

@FinneasGH i would assume it includes IP and Team Acquisition cost from probably monsters. Needless to say tho, huge waste of time and money as many 2nd party games could have been made with that

@FinneasGH I can believe that higher ups are spending outlandish amounts of money on garbage IPs, wouldn't be the first time. Also they will mention inflation, per usual.

@UltimateOtaku91
Truth be told, i dont know - maybe it was the type of game ie PvP instead of PvE (tho why that should make a difference), or maybe that Helldivers 2 was a sequel to a previous game so didnt embody Jim Ryans / Sonys Live service push (or HD2 was merely announced before the Live Service push became a thing).

I just know that a lot of people saw concord as the game to 'make an example of' to send Sony a message on its Live service push, and lack of single player games. That focus now seems to have shifted to Fairgame$ (i think thats the correct spelling).

This is utter madness

Damn!
I just cant believe this game cost that much, it really doesnt show.
Come to think of it, they probably already created a lot of the weekly cgi scenes. Which probably had a fair bit amount of motion capture in it.
Still think it could've done better if they just said from the start what type of game it was, not shroud it in mystery and make it seem like it had some kind of singleplayer narrative or cool co op multiplayer.

Sony should really stop it with the silence and playing cool and just come out with a banging showcase.

I just don't think this is true... it is an exciting story no doubt but I just don't buy it for a second.

Even the most stupid of execs must see that every live service game you put out is equal parts talent and luck in catching the zeitgeist.

At least something like the Last of Us would have had some good will to get people through the door.

Concord had to be spectacular to make people drop their forever games like Fortnite etc.

@SrpskaArtilerija You do realise that Nintendo are suing an indie dev team because of the concept of "throwing a ball and catching a monster", come on now don't pretend Nintendo are perfect here

@bestuardo If you listen to that Colin guy he claims Sony put $200 million in it in the first quarter of 2023 so he's basically saying it cost them $200 million for about a years worth of development.

He's talking out his ass.

I have to agree with the doubters, I'd need something a bit more concrete before I could believe that figure is true.

@Rich33 I think maybe HellDivers already being an IP people loved helped it gain a positive reception. Plus as you say there's a big market for PVE especially if it's dumb fun like HD2 is, Destiny is also primarily PVE and has done very will over the many years it's been out, another example would be the Monster Hunter games which also rely heavily on PVE.

So yeah going forward I think Sony should concentrate more on PVE live service games instead of PvP, so basically it's not looking good for Fairgame$.

@OldGamer999 yeah im going stick to my base ps5 and wait an see what Nintendo will be cooking with the switch 2

I can only speak for myself but I haven't bought a game on Playstation in 2 years and I will only buy games used from CEX once they drop to under £20.

You reap what you sow!

Either way so embarrassing and funny to me! Whom ever thought this would be the future was just pandering and was given wrong market data.

What Hermen Hulst envisioned is I imagine very common among game developers and company executives. However such success is hoped for and not guaranteed. Making a smaller less costly game that would hopefully create interest for more is less risky then spending a fortune to hopefully create the next future phenomenal online money making cash cow.

@OldGamer999 If Switch 2 could run the latest games then I'd say go fully Nintendo, vote with your wallet as they say. For me personally il stick with Playstation and Nintendo going forward, even get to play Xbox games with that duo lol. But hopefully once the PlayStation heavy hitters start releasing you will change your stance.

Hulst's baby eh? That's one ugly baby

"A sense the game would come together because the team was too good to fail."

Why does this same thing always seem to come up when we're dealing with legacy studios or studios spin-off from legacy studios

There must be a curse on Bungie and any studio related to them... cause every studio spun off from them have done nothing but struggle. Firewalk, 343, Certain Affinity... etc are all struggling.

I'm taking the whole $400 million budget with a grain of salt but I can definitely believe Hermen's attitude. Who would have thought that not listening to feedback could become the straw that broke the camel's back. I genuinely wonder if Concord is even gonna come back. I mean, it IS Hermen's baby, and they're going through on airing a Secret Level episode.

Cost of buying studio + development costs post-acquisition + advertising + making animated features + disc manufacturing.

Then you take into account having to pull all those unsold manufactured discs as well as refunds.

I mean, when it was found that Spider-Man Remastered cost...what...$150 million (or was that The Last of Us Part 1?), it probably shouldn't surprise anyone at this point what a whole new game costs Sony to develop.

Even still, Sony...uhm...ponies up a lot of money for its games. It's no secret why Sony keeps upping prices on things, is moving closer and closer to Day 1 PC releases and the Pro is costing so much without a stand and disc drive.

I know it's really cool to see all the impressive things Sony does for advertising its titles (like painting whole subway cars), but I think Sony is starting to see that it's really hurting ROI.

@get2sammyb Also, to be fair, I can only think of one time in like... 15 years... when his source was wrong. I believe that was the Bloodbourne remake.

I thought Hulst would have his finger on the pulse given his background, but if this turns out to be true then it's absolute insanity and shows he has no clue what he's at.

Even if you want to be charitable and maybe he got confused and it was actually $400 mil adding the cost of the studio it's still absolutely beyond the pale. If Hulst has the ability to feel shame he would resign immediately! he should go back to Guerrilla where he and the studio are better together.

@UltimateOtaku91
I will stick with Sony and Switch then probably Switch 2.
Of course they are all a business but the way they did PS5 Pro anniversary bundle was pure hard business on gamers.

@KillerBoy
That’s my stance right now.
Of course I’m really looking forward to some Switch 2 next year and those Nintendo big first party games.
Hopefully we will get one from Sony next year 🤣.
Joking a side they should have two for next year at least.

Well this doesn’t look good they just be focusing on single player experiences and go back to the old school multiplayers I loved the game socom 2 it was so simple yet truly enjoyable and the community was brilliant on it , 400 million dollars Jesus the live service games are not fairing well the moment

400m for a clone of a 10 year old game with worse characters and nothing original. PlayStation brand is in real trouble if they keep the decision makers in place.

@Gamer83 they have the 13k+ Patreon most of which are at the $5 or higher tier and it’s the largest PlayStation podcast. I doubt that’s the motivation.

I cam totally see why Sony hardware and accessory prices are so high and not subsidised now, they have been hemorrhaging money and cannot not afford it anymore

If it's true, it kind of puts that whole Fairgames is being received very positively internally thing in perspective.

I was very eager to see what Sony could do with GaaS, but if this story is true (again, if) they need to get over the GaaS chase and just be happy with Destiny and Helldivers.
Surely that online Horizon game will be fun...

Even if it’s only half that figure, the purchases of Firewalk and Bungie have been absolute disasters for Sony, who are getting their just desserts for abandoning their policy of only acquiring studios they have strong working relationships with.

Modern PlayStation is desperately lacking from strong leadership. The brand hasn’t been the same in my eyes since Andrew House and Shawn Layden left and bean counter Jim Ryan took over. I don’t know if Shuhei Yoshida was pushed or volunteered to look after indie initiatives, but his experience is being wasted there. Hulst never gave me the impression that he was comfortable in his role as Head of PlayStation Studios and seems increasingly out of his depth as CEO. I am not confident about PlayStation’s future under his tenure.

A lot of people are quoting pre covid game development costs as a reason this can't be true, but the cost of everything has absolutely soared these last few years so a $400 million costing on an 8 year development isn't an outlandish claim at all especially if mismanaged.....stop burying your heads in a fanboy haze of denial

Look everyone. I think we can all rally together today and just point at SEGA and thank them for Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Now that will be a game. None of this GaaS nonsense

I wonder if this has anything to do with Sony’s inability to get first party titles out this gen instead of relying on remasters for the bulk of their output.

@Oram77 I know about Nintendo’s numerous legal shenanigans, yes. But of all three, they at least have the best output as game devs & publishers.
Besides, I don’t give a rat’s butt about Pokemon, never liked it.

Nice one, Herman.

Let’s just all be honest with ourselves. The golden age of gaming is over!

If true, I don't know how the hell Herman Hulst still has a job.

@RBMango point being, you guys didn't support them.

Hermen Hulst is PlayStation's Phil Spencer. He's done nothing to earn the co-CEO position and has (and continues to) inflict damage to the PlayStation brand; the GaaS pivot, going multiplatform, PS+ price hikes, greenlighting completely unnecessary remasters/remakes instead of new and exciting projects that showcase why anyone would want a PS5.

At least Jim Ryan earned his place as CEO from his long tenure making PlayStation the dominant brand in Europe.

How the heck this game cost 400M? It’s not an open world games like gow ragnarok or blockbuster movie-like games like uncharted 4.

Honestly, the game looked like 20-30M tops. Very generic...

If there is a Game Crash coming, pricey PS5 Pro is even more useless.

Anyone with brains could easily recognize this fake rumor.
Let's say if Concord did not flop. Selling 5 million copies would generate $200 million revenue, which is only half of this fake development cost, and which is still a disaster. How could you believe this is true. No one will ever make a game that could not cover the development cost even if it sells 10 million copies.

@Boxmonkey I am of the opinion that there is a second video game crash coming. It won't look like the first one, but it will take a couple of Triple A publishers with it.
The writing has been on the wall for at least a year now.

Yikes!! I was already glad it flopped immensly; but now i'm just straightup super, SUPER relieved it failed. Screw live service, screw account bound games and SCREW multiplayer games!
If ANYONE believes these are the future... well.. we all have our illusions I guess.

Really hope Sony doesn't try something this stupid again.

Imagine Kojima with those 400 million...

I simply don't believe this trash cost that much.

@Maubari Marathon: /chuckels/ I'm in danger...

If they really thought this was the future of PlayStation…what the hell were they smoking?!

The fact this team includes many ex-bungie staff isn’t surprising either. Seems like they all have an arrogant “we can’t be touched” attitude, probably as a result of halos success and they seem deluded.

Bungies a mess, firewalk seem to be a mess and hulst needs to take a good look at them and himself before more disasters happen.

Crazy the money sony spent on bungie and now it seems this game.

As others have said, PS needs the likes of shu, Andrew house and co back who actually know what they’re doing. I have no confidence with hulst in charge after all these missteps.

How the hell did they think Concord was the future of PlayStation?!?!? There were literally superior, extremely similar games available for FREE. Did nobody in the board room bother to figure out that 1+1=2? It's disgusting they spent that much chasing a trend basically. Man, I used to really love gaming but lately I don't know anymore...

The hubris is real.

@LifeGirl that’s not a bad thing imo. We need a complete reset of this industry

@UltimateOtaku91
Agree with Sony sticking to PvE, but i believe they also need to think about:

1. Quality over quantity - its what Sony does best normally and Concord wasnt helped by its averageness, but LS game push and quantity of studios taken up by it is what caused a lot of the issues imo.
Maybe keep LS to a couple of specialised studios, with experienced hands, more geared towards making quality ones. Are there any old IPs they could use that wouldnt cause an outrage?

2. Leading on from that, make sure any future LS game is released in a period when at least 2 single player games are releasing. This period could be 9 months or so but they need at least trailers and firm release dates before the LS games launch - that way the LS games arent seen as a threat.

Just my thoughts.

OK, NOT the future of PlayStation, then. If only they had asked…oh, anyone, for example.

Not sure I believe that. It was a high production value game no doubt, but $400 million makes no sense at all, they don’t even spend that on Spider-man a KNOWN and bankable IP. I think Colin has it wrong.

Bought both Bungie and this Studio - so far it seems they really have 'improved' Sony and their reputation.

Obviously there are a LOT of costs involved - not just the staff wages for the time they worked on this, but ll the voice work, studio costs (electricity, water, rates etc) marketing - and merch (Maybe a cancelled toy line now or even cartoon series LOL). The PS5 Pro Concord Special Edition and/or Controllers etc etc...

Who knows whatever they spent, inc marketing that they likely pulled at great cost, the TV adverts you'll not see but cost a lot to make. If they thought this was the Future for Playstation, you never know how 'big' they may of gone on Marketing and TV costs across the world on top of the 'cost' of developers time - their Wages for the years. Often the Actual devs that make the game are the lowest paid in the chain - unless you count the cleaners of the studio that add to the Studio costs to keep it open and running every week...

@OldGamer999

I won't be buying another new Playstation console. You just need to exercise a little patience and you can play their best franchises on PC eighteen months later, anyway.

The lack of exclusive games this gen has been debated to death, but the direction of the company in the past few years has been very alienating and it's clear they aren't fussed with retaining those of us who've been with the brand since the early days. But hey, Jim Ryan sold all those consoles during a pandemic, right?

The Pro was the final straw. I accept the arguments for the price point with it being an enthusiast product, but that 30th anniversary £1k+ FOMO bundle they've going to crash PS Direct with next Thursday is the ultimate middle finger.

It's a brand with an identity crisis which only sees its customers as paypigs nowadays.

Hard hit for Sony but I'm glad this happened in such a big and impossible-to-ignore way. They've got to do better.

@OldGamer999 "I will stick with Sony and Switch then probably Switch 2."

At best Switch 2 will be as powerful as the base PS4 so you will definitely need either PS6 or PC to play all the latest AAA games like RE10, Cyberpunk 2, etc.

@UltimateOtaku91 Helldivers 2 didn’t fail because it is a consistent product with a soul, and it is a tiny bit edgy.

Concord meanwhile is a streamlined copycat, which never received a soul, because of the „toxic positivity“ and because several studios worked on it in parallel, with limited coordination, so that the single pieces don’t form a coherent whole.

People love Sony games for being the perfect blend of very high production value, artistic expression, and sheer fun. And what of this deliveres Concord?

Well, if you gotta go for a loss, go big enough to make a statement.

@themightyant Being skeptical is fine. But 400m is definitely possible!

If you outsource a big chunk, with the basis still being a mess after several years, and the boss says that in 18 months it has to be the best product Sony has ever made, then these outsourcing studios could demand EVERY price, and they most certainly did.
These external studio owners are rich people now!

Nah, Sony gotta be smarter than this smh
I wonder what went through their minds when they bought the studio

Not a fan of Hermen Hulst's leadership.

I wonder how many Bloodborne Remakes/Remasters $400 million equates to 🤔

@Tecinthebrain
Yep that’s what I’m gonna do.
But also probably go Pro as well.

Herman needs to be removed, the guy was boasting about this game as if it was going to be something massive, everyone could see this was going to astronomically flop but nope, no one at Sony could see this, that alone is worrying for PS going forward.

I really hope PS goes back under Japan.

Such a massive waste of money. Not looking good for the future of PlayStation if Hulst stays in charge and keeps pushing games like this. Anyone think that Marathon will fair any better?

Herman Hulst is absolutely clueless!

For half his salary I could do a much much better job then him.

Never liked Hulst, never liked guerilla studio and Horizon games they are mediocre, If this man saw this game and thought it was the future of PlayStation then we have a big problem

Anyone who’s listened to Colin as long as I have will know he takes great pride in his journalism accuracy. He wouldn’t say something like this without some confidence. He hates being wrong, but he does own it when he is , like with his incorrect leak about the Bloodborne sequel. He keeps a tally of how many times he’s been wrong on major industry news and definitely would not risk eating crow about anything.

Still… an absolutely disgusting budget for what the game ended up being. I does make me wonder if they somehow try to repurpose any of the assets or other parts of the game to recoup all the investment and human power that went into making it. And I’m still not convinced that they won’t re-release it maybe in some alternate form maybe as a F2P or something.

@Arxagelos agree, I just played both last week, enjoyed the first one, 2 felt like a Ubisoft mess.

@IamJT
He's staking a lot on this, then. That number just comes off as unbelievable for what the game was.

@themightyant
Most of Spidey price isn't even development cost but rather licensing.

herman hulst needs to be kicked out of playstation immediately

This is one of the most astonishing pieces of PlayStation news I've ever heard.

I'd be shocked if this was true. $400 M is an unfathomable amount...

@Th3solution I can't wait for Concord Kart Racing.

@Max_the_German Sorry, the maths just don’t make ANY sense. The studio was 179 staff at peak, around a third of the size of Insomniac’s 500. The 8 year development has been firmly debunked as Firewalk wasn’t even created until 2018. The first year or more would have been setting up the studio and pre-production with a MUCH smaller team. At MOST it was a 5 years of full development. Yes there were many support staff (1,972 credited staff according to Moby games, including everything from lawyers to Sony staff) but again that is HALF of what Spider-man 2 took to make (3,578 credited staff). We know SM2 cost circa $300 million and launched a year before so $400 million for Concord makes absolutely no sense at all.

@ChrisDeku @carlos82 sad to see how few people seem able to do a basic bit of fact checking, so many believing everything they read/hear online. $400 million doesn’t pass the most basic sniff test. Bogus story.

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