welcome to inside games the only game you knew show brave enough to say that Concord despite Sony's decision to remove the game from sale and refund everybody including me is not the biggest video game plop of all time yeah yeah we have some math for you later but uh even though Concord might be forgettable it's unlikely to crash the entire hundred billion games industry so if you're at Sony or Concord developers firewalk Studios chin up it's not really that bad it's a you made a game that's not great yeah the sun will still come up tomorrow and we still have video games and you can always try again hopefully uh Silver Linings air quotes aside Concord is it's done Sony announced that it's PlayStation 5 and PC hero shooter will be taken offline on Friday and that players will get full refunds that's right Lawrence I got my email yesterday I was like oh all $60 has come back to me uh it's a stunning collapse for a game that was released less than two weeks ago uh Concord though never got started after it was given a lukewarm response from critics and an even colder shoulder from fans the game's director Ryan Ellis said on the Playstation blog that quote while many qualities of the experience resonated with players we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we'd intended he added that they will take the game offline and quote explore options including those that will better reach our players making the game free would be a good start that's a good way to reach players but uh we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves yeah yeah the failure of Concord is an unmitigated disaster for Sony which was counting on Concord to be a money-making live service game supposed to last for years uh kind of like OverWatch fortnite which have been going for years and years and years and this was less than two weeks mhm yeah instead uh nobody played it analysts told IGN it may have sold as few as 25,000 units its all-time Peak on Steam was less than 700 players now of course that doesn't take into account that people could be playing on the PlayStation too but this was really bad for PC uh we also asked around a bit and heard the actual sales number could be even lower than the 25,000 to the tune of just 10,000 sales uh that hurts for a game publisher that is more used to sales in the 10 million range Yeah by comparison Suicide Squad kill the Justice League had more than 18 times concord's player numbers on Steam and that was also a financial disaster that contributed to a $200 million hit to one Brothers discoveries Revenue unsurprisingly that has led to recent reports of layoffs at Rocksteady because of the game's poor performance so there's no telling what the Fallout from Concord might be here uh starting with developer firewalk Studios but I mean generally it's not going to be good for anybody I don't think yeah it's unlikely that uh this kind of thing leads to a lot of a lot of happy outcomes you know uh again after asking around we got to be a little vague about this uh we learned that firewalk Studios is actually on pay time off at the moment they have some weeks of vacation that they've been granted so the entire studio is uh given some time off after launching the game which is you know probably for the best yeah word is that lay offs haven't been discussed yet essentially the entire Studio has been given a vacation while Studio heads talk with Sony Executives to decide what's next for this game which could include either dropping the project entirely or reworking it as a free-to-play game either way this is an unprecedented flop for one of the games industry's largest players uh there's no such thing as too big to fail in gaming so that's kind of interesting uh I mean and say what you will about cyber Punk but that game reportedly sold 13 million copies in its first 2 weeks so it's still captured people's interest and got them to spend money and their time on the game uh like we said Sony plan for Concord is a big live service game for this year along with hellers 2 and while Sony has previously had its big goals for live service games it's it said steep back from those earlier predictions of having more than 10 live service games by the end of the 2025 fiscal year everything we've done has worked so why don't we just do this too ah yeah the collapse of Concord comes after another Sony studio naughty dog act its live service Last of Us project late last year after there were developmental issues and of course there's been a bunch of drama around Bungie uh Sony acquired them in 2022 in part for their experience with live service games but it seems to have yet to pay off uh maybe maybe for hell divers I don't know if they consulted with the H divers but uh but how big of This Disaster will Concord be for Sony we don't have public figures for concord's development costs but we know the firewalk had been working on it for 8 years and and some estimates range from $100 to $200 million to make the game uh IGN estimated that development of the game could have reached into the hundreds of millions yeah I'm I'm sure it already did uh does that make Concord the biggest flop of all time though let's see if we can put a number on it or at least a number range on it just to get an idea of what we're dealing with yeah before we start diving into our clinical clown math a quick word we're not doing this in an effort to shame Sony or any of the developers of firewalk Studios we're doing it because this is video game history happening in front of our eyes we'd like some context to how historical it might actually be so let's try not to grave dance a little bit here that's what everybody was doing yesterday when they announced it and I was like all right you know well it sucks but whatever yeah I get it but at the same time that's not why we're here and that's not what we're doing uh we like to put some some actual industry numbers next to the news so you get a proper idea of how impactful some of the stuff actually is it's kind of like when cyber Punk came out everybody was talking about it like it was the end of the world but like the the math the data was there it was actually a pretty successful project so that's that's why we're doing what we're doing all right Sony acquired firewalk last year also for an undisclosed sum again we got to be pretty vague about it but the number we heard around the water cooler was like $200 million interestingly PlayStation X boss Jim Ryan who presided over that deal left Sony later in 2023 oh I wonder if there was a little bonus in there for him maybe uh I wonder if he also maybe knew that the pivot to life service wasn't going to work out and he didn't want to be around for all those checks to land on the table just just a conspiracy theory though Executives always know first and they're always the ones to leave they they always are the ones to leave first too uh all right so we do know that firew walk's former owner raised a lot of money in recent years in September 20121 uh the company probably monsters raised $200 million and announced a publishing partnership with Sony For an upcoming title from firewalk and in early 2022 probably monsters raised another $250 million to fund addition Studios yeah a lot of money getting thrown around we're just getting a sense for the the volumes of cash right now and like we said 200 million keeps popping up that was the uh Financial hit that Warner took when Suicide Squad didn't hit so if we assume that PlayStation acquired firewalk in April 20123 for $200 million they would also have to cover payroll costs for the studio since then yeah and now we get into some clown math this is the fun part the acquisition announcement stated that firewalk had 150 employees and growing at time firewalk is located in bellw Washington which has an average game developer salary of $124,000 a year according to zip recruiter so let's assume that firewalk had an average of 175 employees between its acquisition in April 2023 and now which is about one and 1/2 years payroll cost of around $32 million so if we add that to also the supposed acquisition cost that puts Sony's cost at around $232 million uh and that's that's just flat I'm sure there's more cost than that you got got to stock the fridge with snacks you know you got to you got to keep people swimming in coffee but at this rate that that values a total loss given that they're recalling the games and also issuing refunds so there's extra cost involved with that which I was surprised by by the way Lawrence they just gave me the refund I didn't even asked for it they literally just sent it back tocket they literally just shoved it in my pocket on Steam it was that was it but is this Concord the greatest flop of all time if we're talking about alltime flops we got to mention the granddaddy the one everybody knows ET the Extraterrestrial the for the Atari 2600 it's a it's a legend yeah this is kind of fun too cuz I never tried to dig into the economics of ET there's just the folklore you know um so here we go Atari spent $23 million on the ET license and this is back in 1982 uh and paid a single developer $200,000 to make the game imagine paying $200,000 in getting a game versus paying $30 million on top of 200 million anyway uh in today's dollars I'll adjust it up that's more than $73 million ET did sell about 1.5 million copies that's with all the returns and stuff taken out uh with Atari 2600 cartridge prices being around $30 each back in the early 80s yeah all right so the direct math on that equals 45 million in Revenue which seemingly says that ET was actually profitable but Atari didn't get to keep all that money uh there's the cost of manufacturing cartridges shipping them to retailers the retailers margin all biing out of that that money yeah unfortunately we have no idea what the profit margin might have been on an Atari 2600 cartridge in 1982 I tried to I tried to research but there's not a whole lot out there I did find this informative graphic breaking down the margins of a Super Nintendo game probably from the early 90s but theoretically a lot of those ratios would probably stay roughly the same uh this puts the publisher margin at 33% of the total sales cost which would mean that Atari only saw a third of that 45 million in Revenue just about 15 million uh that means that they fell short of the 22 million license cost by $7 million MH yeah so 7 million adjusted for inflation it's $22.8 million loss in 2024 which is like a tenth of potentially what Concord lost so that's pretty exciting but that's not the full figure either that doesn't account for the sunk cost of the millions of Game cartridges they manufactured and shipped to retailers that never sold since Atari drastically overestimated the popularity of the game sounds a little familiar uh but ET also helped collapse an entire industry it's it really did it cited as a major contributing factor to the infamous video game market crash of 1983 which decimated the industry in America well how bad was it in 1983 the home video game markets Revenue in the US was estimated at 3.2 billion but had dropped to just 100 million by 1985 that's crazy so those those losses aren't all Ataris but in total money lost yeah that already beats Concord and that's not even adjusted for inflation other analyst estimates aren't quite as dire uk- based Market intelligent firm pelum Smithers which is a very UK name shows the total video game industry Revenue dropping from 42 billion in 1982 to 37 billion 83 to 26 billion 84 and finally 14 billion 85 so that's a pretty bad drop off but those are Global numbers uh so that's that's tens of billions of dollars that's a lot year-over year so what is all this clown math that's why we call it clown math cuz we're just sort of extrapolating what does this tell us not really much it's it's clown math so we're doing our best out here with what we've got yeah yeah again this is just to kind of give us perspective on the severity of what we're witnessing uh but if we really want to draw conclusions I suppose this is it uh it looks like Concord itself might have lost more money on an individual project basis than ET lost for Atari back in the day but the resulting game Crash cost the entire industry tens of billions of dollars over the course of multiple years we think Concord is very unlikely to do that N I don't think that's going to happen uh unlike the 80s gaming is very very diverse uh tons of different platforms products to keep people happy and buying and for Sony's sake they have the PlayStation Network which continues to be a money Factory for them I mean all sorts of video games hell divers is just one of them constantly bringing in cash MH yeah and and they get kind of like the the margins on a physical retailer every time somebody buys something off the PSN they get a little slice I almost knocked a cup of water off so every every EA Sports FC card pack or whatever they get a little chunk of that and that money is just coming in no matter what so Concord is not going to stop people from spending money on the PSN entirely uh so they just got a onetime loss but they have some recurring revenues and apparently might be launching a PS5 Pro that if the rumors are true is going to have a very healthy profit margin baked into the retail cost so that's going to bring in some money for them yeah meanwhile k cords PlayStation trophies just became very super rare it's shutting down in a few days there are reports of players jumping off cliffs in order to grind XP quicker before the game goes offline for good uh physical copies of the game are listing for $100 or more on eBay the last time you looked I don't even know how much that controller is now that's got to be a collector's item a Concord uh Playstation controller yeah and they've got uh they got an episode and final level that Amazon video game Anthology show oh so that's kind of are well I guess we'll see we'll see if that actually ends up happening or if it just gets cut from the show uh yeah this is this is fascinating stuff and and again I I say that word with a mind that you know some people are going through very hard times right now uh I think it's super easy from the consumer perspective to see something and then be like you look around you're like it's obvious nobody wanted this well it's obvious now it wasn't obvious 5 years ago or 8 years ago when they decided what game to make or how to make it you're basically throwing darts in the dark and you hope that one lands and lands in the middle of the bullseye half a decade down the road that's not as easy as it sounds and I think a lot of people do trivialize the prospect of making a game and investing it and getting a 100 plus people to all work on a project together uh so definitely have some sympathy for that but the market uh as a consumer I'm a little less empathetic towards I think I think we're all kind of burned out on games of service I think we're burned out on games that have their marketing and money-making mechanic put first uh a game that's just a platform for sales as opposed to ostensibly coming from someone's deep passion um maybe at some point somebody had a passionate idea for what Concord was supposed to be but I don't think that's the game we saw that's how it comes across to me Bruce I don't know how do you feel about it that is exactly the way I felt about it I will continue to trust my own instincts because when I played this two months ago or month month and a half ago whatever it was I was like number one this game does not feel like fun to me that's just that was just my subjective opinion but number two I paid $60 for that pre-order to get into that stupid beta and there was the $40 version obviously that's the retail version I was like they are crazy for charging money for this there's no way in hell when they've got four or five other video games right next to it that are almost the same for free why would they ever charge for this uh and I was right like I I really like this was something I I kind of saw coming from a uh a while while back and I don't want it to happen I didn't want this to crash and burn that's not something like I was like H it'll find its players and it'll it'll go I'm really surprised that Sony shut this all the way down I I think that there are two outcomes I'm sure you've heard this a thousand times on the internet already but I'll say it uh free to play um I don't know that we can count Concord out yet I think it might come back free to play uh in a month or two um or this is this is the scary part are are they going to start doing what Warner Brothers did with bgirl are they going to get rid of Concord entirely scrap it and say tax right off $200 million tax write off because they totally could they could say they could they could get all the get rid of all this off the internet and be like ah whatever you know it's a loss no big deal and then that will help Sony's bottom line that is the scarier option for me I agree I I don't think Sony's that kind of company or Playstation rather I mean there's there are Phantom games the PT or whatever but that that that's all like exterior drama I think that leads to that sort of thing 200 million I think to PlayStation is not like it's bad but it's not worth throwing something in the grave over cuz I agree I I think I think their desire to get multiple games of service games off the ground is stronger than their desire to realize $200 million gain in one quarter or one fiscal year yeah I think um they they've already invested so much into this uh and they're so dedicated to this strategy that has yet to pay off so either there I think it's if if they back off Concord I think it's kind of symbolic of them backing off of games of service entirely because they've they've had a number of of thuds um so I think I think instead what probably happens Bruce is yeah they they take it back they spend a year probably trying to add some kind of single player content to it and then relaunch it as a free-to-play game where it has some some game play mode that's not just hero Shooters uh to get you invested in the world and the characters and then the hero shooter stuff is still there and that's where you get deeply engaged and you need a rich online presence with your favorite skin that cost 20 bucks or whatever I'm not into that but yeah the the on the Shelf comparison Is Not Great like you said um things like gench and impact exist and that's free uh and it's just an a fire hose of content that's all accessible and ready to play and meanwhile you boot up Concord and they hit you with like characters that aren't that appealing really uh and uh and some game mechanics that take a little bit of learning to to get over and you can't put that much friction on top of a $40 price tag today regardless of the game's merits independent of all that comparatively it just doesn't have a shot and I think it does speak a bit to maybe Sony's Assumption of the power of their own brand that they tried to charge 40 bucks for it I'm sure that the game game plan was get 40 bucks for it get all the revenue we can for the first N9 months or a year and then we'll bring it to freeo play later and I think they were hoping that the package that they had would still operate on those value perceptions but boy is it not sorry so yeah they got to retool it um they were they were maybe a half decade too late I can't even see this hitting in 2019 or anything like that though it's tough yeah even next to OverWatch it kind of already looks a little unappealing so yeah hopefully there's a path forward hopefully uh hopefully they they glamorized some of the characters they add some gameplay modes that hook people and they can get another another shot that's what we can hope for yeah and we hope that uh not everybody is losing their jobs at firewalk I I I hope that that's because I mean that's going to be another thing that all the internet's going to be like oh man I can't believe they laid off everybody but then also they're grave dancing on Concord so we don't want everybody to lose their jobs we want them to Pivot and maybe make a game that's successful and that people will play that's that's what I would like to see most of the developers are probably shopping their resumes around right now so even if they do decide to go forward they're probably going to have a a big staff turnover to deal with and they're probably going to have a brain drain because of that which makes it harder to get a project going again uh it almost feels like BioWare Anthem right they they tried to make a game according to the uh what earned money in the Market at the time but by the time it landed the product wasn't fully baked didn't seem to have a very profound idea behind it and a lot of the talent left either before or halfway through the project so you're just left with this rickety thing no one knows how to work with yeah it's really too bad um hey you know what though you know what it's not bad the inside games patreon people are supporting this every single month uh unlike Concord and here are some patrons that I'll never forget my favorite character in Concord trash can Pablo Garcia Christian Morgan Anderson Mason Hoover and Kyle heon yeah unlike PlayStation we we're not dealing with $200 million budgets to make episodes here so individual support really does make a difference and we really appreciate it um speaking of appreciation I've got some patrons that love Concord so much they already got a tattoo of bone face they actually sent me the pictures before we recorded old bone face remember him the little pouty eye oh that's grave dancing sorry Brian Cosner monkey Butler's night bort and Baku bomb that's forever you know it's not coming off [Music] a [Music] a [Music]