Marvel Rivals director thinks Concord flopped because it ‘didn’t bring any unique value’
Marvel Rivals game director Thaddeus Sasser has suggested that Sony’s Concord flopped because it “didn’t bring any unique value” to players.
Sony took Concord offline and pulled the game from sale within two weeks of its release this summer, citing a poor reception from players to the live service shooter, which was priced at $40.
Sasser touched on the fate of the game, which also saw its developer Firewalk Studios closed by Sony, in an interview with VideoGamer.
“There’s a switching cost,” he said. “I’ve already invested in Overwatch, I’ve got 15 skins for Pharah, I’m not going anywhere.”
The interview was recorded ahead of the launch of Marvel Rivals, a free-to-play hero shooter published by NetEase, which attracted 10 million players in three days following its release last week.
“As a game developer you’re always worried until the audience has responded,” Sasser said. “The truth is that I don’t think anybody can accurately predict this or the game industry would be radically different today.
“There’s a lot of games that come out that people are like ‘it’s going to do well’ then it flops or people come out and go ‘it’s going to flop’ and it succeeds amazingly. So, I think it’s really hard to tell ahead of time and you’re always worried about that.”
Sasser said he hoped the popularity of the Marvel IP would be enough to convince players who were already invested in competing games to try something new.
“I think the trick is that you need to have that reason that people want to come and play your game and I think Marvel Rivals does that exactly with the superhero. I don’t know about you, but when I heard the concept of the game I was like ‘Oh my God I want to go be Storm in a game’, ‘I want to go be Doctor Strange in a game’. I want to be those heroes in the game, that sounds awesome.
“And of course my mind immediately leapt to all the cool possibilities you could have with that. That’s what I think will pull people in as well too. If we’ve done our jobs well, they’ll love
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