Concord didn’t fail PlayStation. PlayStation failed Concord

digitaltrends.com:

Ever since its disastrous launch, there’s a lot of discussion about how Concord failed for PlayStation. It’s a fair conversation, but it’s not the only one that needs to be had in order to understand how we got here. We can’t ignore how PlayStation failed Concord and its developers.

Tuesday afternoon, Hermen Hulst announced that Concord, which was shut down two weeks after its launch earlier this summer, would not be coming back. On top of that, he explained that Sony was shutting down Concord developer Firewalk Studios and mobile game developer Neon Koi. He cites the move as “part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen SIE’s Studio Business.”

Just as I said when Xbox and Embracer laid off developers earlier in the year, this reasoning isn’t good enough.

• PlayStation has quietly doubled the price of Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4
• Everything announced at PlayStation’s September 2024 State of Play
• Concord lead reportedly steps down in wake of launch disaster

Sony Interactive Entertainment picked up these teams, and more, during an acquisition-happy era for the game industry. Sony believed it could buy its way into live service and mobile game success. That wasn’t the case, a major miscalculations by Hulst and other leaders at SIE’s Studio Business Group. Instead of any of Sony’s top brass being held accountable for that failure, it’s the developers who spent years working on those products. It’s another sign of poor health for an industry that undervalues the people creating its games.

Fool me once

PlayStation seemed very optimistic when it acquired Neon Koi (then known as Savage Game Studios) in 2022 and Firewalk Studios in 2023. For Firewalk, Hulst promised that SIE’s acquisition would “grow our live service operations and deliver something truly special for gamers.” For Neon Koi, Hulst said that acquisition was part of “a continued drive to expand our audience and bring PlayStation to more people than ever before” via mobile gaming.

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