In the last two weeks, Sony and Firewalk gave players their first chance to try out the new 5v5 shooter Concord. But apparently only a few people were interested, at least on Steam.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Sony’s attempt to establish a hero shooter with Concord will not be an easy undertaking. The fact that the closed beta was expanded from just pre-orderers to all PS Plus subscribers and extended by one day already suggested that the pre-order numbers are not exactly impressive. The response to the open beta last weekend reinforces this assumption.
Sea SteamDB At its peak, just 2,388 simultaneous players were playing the open beta, and that’s really not a lot considering the ambitions. And that was only on the first day, after which the number of players dropped significantly – apparently the few players who tried out the beta were not kept interested in the long term.
Sure, these are just the PC numbers on Steam without Epic Games and a not insignificant proportion of players will be on the PS5, but this number is not exactly encouraging. Especially since the game is due to be released on August 23rd – so little interest so close to release doesn’t sound particularly exciting.
Concord had already faced some resistance before. Many players felt the game was too similar to Overwatch (“the poor man’s Overwatch”), and the PSN requirement for PC players, which at least allows cross-play and cross progression, met with massive resistance, as was the case with Helldivers 2, mainly because PSN is not available in many territories. The alternative would be a separate account system, as used by titles such as Destiny 2, but that doesn’t seem to be an option for the developers.
It will be interesting to see how the game develops, given the apparently modest interest. Concord would not be the first game to pull the plug relatively soon after release due to a lack of players, as was recently the case with Synced.
The PlayStation action game Concord is entering a beta testing phase.
