Concord wanted a piece of the hero shooter pie, but Sony’s shooter failed miserably. Ironically, Marvel Rivals has now managed to launch successfully as a new Overwatch clone. The game director behind the game explains what he says went wrong with Concord.
What happened to Concord? The biggest gaming flop of the year is probably Concord. The hero shooter reportedly cost Sony $250 million but failed miserably. Apparently no one was interested in the new service game. The game was even shut down two weeks after release.
Ironically, another hero shooter is currently enjoying quite a bit of success. Marvel Rivals reached a player peak of over 480,000 users in its first week (via SteamDB). The reviews on Steam are currently mostly positive.
The game’s game director, Thaddeus Sasser, explained in a podcast why he believes Concord failed and why Marvel Rivals works.
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According to him, there was nothing original about Concord
What does Thaddeus Sasser say? Thaddeus Sasser is an industry veteran who has worked on various shooters such as Battlefield Hardline. He is the game director for Marvel Rivals. In a Videogamer podcast before the game’s release, he talked about Marvel Rivals, but also about Concord.
As for Concord, he says he believes there was nothing original about the game that made people want to switch to the game. There would be no new incentive for Overwatch players.
In the podcast he also praises the concept of Marvel Rivals, his own game. He believes that his game attracts people because it has the well-known superheroes as a concept. That’s already a reason to try the game.
According to him, the opportunities that the heroes have are also an aspect that could attract people. He then continues: If we’ve done our job well, they’ll love what they play and they’ll want to play even more.
At least Marvel Rivals is off to a pretty good start. But we have to wait and see whether it’s just initial euphoria or whether players will stick with the new hero shooter for a longer period of time. For many, the game is currently even better than Overwatch 2. A former Blizzard boss even criticized Marvel Rivals, but he also received criticism himself: Former Blizzard boss calls Marvel Rivals an “Overwatch clone”, embarrassing himself badly