Sony Claims to Have Learned Their Lesson from the Failure of ‘Concord’, But I’m Not Sure About That

Sony has been experiencing a bit of a bumpy road when it comes to their live service offerings. Concord falling flat was already a huge blow, but then following that up with the Marathon controversy, it feels like someone is trying to tell you something. Seems like you should listen.

playstation does not need to force the live service thing

A roundtable discussion, pieces of it transcribed by PushSquare, detailed comments by the CEO of the Studio Business Group, Hermen Hulst, regarding the failure of Concord. Now, he admits that they entered into a “hyper-competitive segment of the market,” and that’s where the record scratch should hit and everyone goes back to acting like they have some sense. You do not have to make live service games just because everyone else is. I don’t know if it’s greed, arrogance, or a hellish combination of both, but just leave it alone. Fortnite, Destiny, Call of Duty, they have that locked down. And that’s okay.

You didn’t get here by doing that — don’t act like you have to stay here by doing it. Hulst speaks about not differentiating enough, and it feels like some level of self-awareness. And then I can’t help but yell at the screen like Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar when you basically tell me that you’re going to keep at it. Have we learned nothing here? Don’t bang your head against the wall. You drop a live service game, and it flops. There’s a reason for that. You can’t differentiate enough to get in; it is what it is.

Shooters and fighting games have one shared characteristic: unless you’re a competition-level player, people latch onto their “feel” and don’t let it go. That’s why you have Call of Duty people, and you have Battlefield people. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken — they all feel a particular way. People want to feel like they’re putting on their favorite clothes. You are not going to shoehorn your way into this. People have gone crazy for the Ghost series because that’s what you do. You even managed to get a dope multiplayer mode into it. Sony, let that be your thing. Do what you do and don’t worry about anyone else. Great single player with appropriate multiplayer is like a midrange jump shot; it’s still very effective. Don’t let the dorks convince you that you have to shoot threes all the time.