According to all accounts, Concorde landed with a dull, intoxicating thud.
The team-based shooter is one of the few new first-party PlayStation games coming this year. Sony released it on PS5 and PC on August 23. The company doesn’t typically reveal detailed player numbers for its own platforms. However, Steam does. The numbers aren’t pretty.
The number of players on Steam doesn’t fully reflect a game’s success. However, it is a key data point from which we can extrapolate some assumptions. During its first weekend, Concorde The game failed to surpass 700 concurrent players on Steam. That’s a disappointing number for a relatively high-profile launch, especially one from a major publisher.
For perspective, Galactic Burger, an indie cooking simulation game I’d never heard of that came out the same day had over four times as many concurrent players on Steam (469) as Concorde (104) at some point on Wednesday. As for the comparison with a supposed blockbuster of this year, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League reached a peak of over 13,400 concurrent players on Steam. The co-op game was a notorious failure that resulted in a $200 million loss for Warner Bros. Discovery.
Furthermore, Concorde has racked up 444 reviews on Steam as of this writing. Some analysts estimate that each Steam review translates into between 30 and 50 sales. On the high end of the scale, that would put ConcordeThe sales volume on Steam is around 22,000.
We don’t have a clear idea of PlayStation sales figures yet, but as a thought exercise, let’s say three times as many people bought Concorde on PS5 so far. At $40 each and a speculative total of 88,000 units sold, that would put ConcordeThe game’s gross revenue is around $3.5 million (that’s before Valve’s cut of Steam purchases). That wouldn’t be enough to cover the development and marketing costs of a game that took Firewalk Studios (which Sony bought last year) eight years to make. So yeah, Concorde has all the signs of being a disaster.
There are many reasons why Concorde The game hasn’t really caught on with players. I played a few games during the open beta and found it average. The combat is decent and some of the core ideas, like a cool, lore-rich map, are interesting, but I felt like there wasn’t enough new stuff.
The first wave of characters is bland, which isn’t ideal for a hero shooter when Apex Legends And Overwatch 2 (much more popular, free-to-play rival titles) each have dozens of distinct and engaging personalities that fans can connect with. The influence of Guardians of the Galaxy is being felt keenly, for better or worse, making it seem even more like Firewalk and Sony are chasing trends that were popular in 2016.
The biggest mistake of all seems to be the price. Players can access so many similar games without paying a dime, they have to shell out $40 for Concorde was obviously not an attractive proposition for the vast majority of PS5 and PC owners.
It is not entirely impossible that we will witness a remarkable event. No Man’s Sky –change of style. But the stage seems set for Concorde to quickly move to PlayStation Plus to boost the player base, then go free-to-play at a later date, much like many other live games before it.
And yet, Concorde That seems to be the only real sour note on what has been an overall pretty strong year for PlayStation so far.
The product released by Sony Helldivers 2 is the second best-selling game in the United States so far this year, according to industry analysts at Circana. College Football 25 sold more copies in the country. In fact, Helldivers 2 is Sony’s best-selling game Never released, with over 12 million copies sold in its first 12 weeks.
The decision to release the game simultaneously on PS5 and PC has paid off, with the majority of initial sales coming through Steam, analysts say. However, Steam player numbers have declined significantly in recent months, partly due to a controversial account linking requirement.
Star BladeAnother Sony-published game developed by a third-party studio, has received generally positive reviews from critics and is also enjoying strong commercial results. Developer Shift Up estimated that sales had exceeded one million units in its first two months, and stated in June that a PC port was under consideration.
Sony’s strategy of bringing its major exclusives to PC within a few years of their PlayStation launches has proven to be successful in recent years. This year, Sony released two slightly older games on Steam in the form of Forbidden Horizon West And The Ghost of Tsushima. These are both excellent faithful ports that run well on my high-end PC as well as my Steam Deck. They have also seen success in terms of sales, with the former entering the top 10 best-selling games list in the US in its first week. Ghost topped the overall US game sales charts for May, according to Circana, just after Star Blade I did the same thing in April.
Sony has at least two more successful PC ports on the way this year. God of War: Ragnarök will be released on that platform on September 19. The previous game sold over 2.5 million copies on PC as of February, according to Insomniac’s major leak, so the sequel also looks set to sell well. Until dawn The remake will be released on PC and PS5 a few weeks later.
And then there is the little matter of The Last of Us Part 2 Remasteredwhich came to PS5 earlier this year with an awesome new roguelike mode included. There’s no PC release date yet, but TLOU Day (Naughty Dog’s annual celebration of the series on September 26) is right around the corner. That seems like a great opportunity for an announcement ahead of the HBO adaptation’s second season, which will debut in 2025.
A cautious approach seems wise for Part 2. Sony will want to make sure that the PC port does not have any such technical issues. Part 1 I had when it came to this platform, so it’s important to give the developers all the time they need to polish it.
Sony even has a few more first-party games planned for the latter part of the year. It may not have to wait long to get rid of the smell of Concorde as a highly anticipated and completely adorable platformer Astro Robot coming to PS5 on September 6. Lego Horizon Adventures — a more family-friendly take on the Horizon series — is heading to PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch in a notable cross-platform debut this holiday season.
And then there’s the hardware side of the equation. In the first half of the calendar year, Sony sold just under 7 million PS5s. That’s down from 9.3 million in the same period in 2023, but a decline is to be expected at this point in the system’s lifecycle.
The PS5’s comparison to the competition speaks volumes. While Microsoft has long kept mum on how many Xboxes it’s sold, some analysts estimated earlier this year that the ratio of PS5 sales to Xbox Series X/S was more than five to one. Wow! Given Sony’s larger install base, it’s no wonder Microsoft is increasingly eager to bring its first-party games to PlayStation.
At first glance, PlayStation Portal seems like a cutting-edge peripheral for hardcore fans. It simply lets you play games from your own PS5 remotely without even supporting Sony’s cloud gaming service.
The Portal has proven to be a surprising success. Sony says the device, which was often out of stock for months, has exceeded expectations. It’s the best-selling gaming accessory this year in terms of value, according to Circana. And rumors are circulating that Sony is “paying close attention to the current handheld console market,” perhaps suggesting the company is finally ready to work on a true Vita/PSP successor. One can hope.
Even the already struggling PS VR2 seems to have found some traction after a recent sale and the release of a dongle that allows owners to use it to play virtual reality games on PC. According to one report, the price drop led to a sudden 2,350% spike in sales. Sony even sold more units in a single day (July 28) than it had in the previous seven months, according to Sony News Agency. The shortcut. Reports suggest that PS VR2 sales have been disappointing for Sony, but a surge this big (or anything close to it) would be surprising. On top of the discount, the added utility of being able to use the headset for PC gaming surely helped, as the PS VR2’s game library remains fairly small.
There’s another piece of hardware that could make 2024 an even more exciting year for Sony: the much-talked-about PS5 Pro. For months, leaks have suggested a mid-gen update is coming this holiday season. Rumors suggest the PS5 Pro could offer faster speeds, faster game rendering, improved graphics, better ray tracing performance, and an 8K performance mode. Given that new variants of Microsoft’s Xbox add internal storage, change the color of the box, or remove a disc drive, the PS5 Pro could seem like an even tastier option for current-gen holdouts.
