Skip to main content

Sony’s new live-service title Concord is having a rough launch

A sniper from Concord leaping in the air.
PlayStation

Sony’s live-service hero shooter Concord launched on PC and PlayStation 5 last week, and the early numbers are looking grim.

According to third-party data site SteamDBConcord peaked at a disappointing 697 concurrent players on PC on launch day. At the time of this writing, there are 252 players in the game. This is despite two beta periods, an early access period that began on August 20, and a public launch on August 23. In comparison, Helldivers 2, another PlayStation first-party, live-service game released simultaneously on PC and PlayStation 5, hit a concurrent players peak of 458,709 around launch. Six months in, it still rakes in tens of thousands of players.

Recommended Videos

Concord is also on PlayStation 5, and while Sony hasn’t released its monthly top downloads report yet, things aren’t looking great there either. If you go to the PlayStation Store and sort the PS5 Games page by “bestselling,” Concord is ranked 38th at the time of publication. This doesn’t represent how many people are actually playing, but it’s a low placement for a game that just came out and was marketed heavily by PlayStation.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

There is some Concord activity over on Twitch, with 505 viewers watching streams at the time of this writing. For comparison, Star Wars Outlaws, which also just launched, has 112,000 viewers on the site.

Concord is a 5v5 hero shooter developed by PlayStation Studios-owned Firewalk Studios as part of the larger company’s live-service push. It’s reportedly been in the works for “around eight years,” according to the lead character designer, and has been heavily marketed by Sony since it acquired Firewalk in 2023. Reviews, however, have been mixed. Digital Trends’ Giovanni Colantonio wrote that Concord has “fun hero-shooter bones,” but that the game “lacks original ideas that elevate that promising foundation.”

It’s unclear what the future looks like for Concord. On one hand, it could start drawing in players with a few updates. The developers have already committed to at least three seasons that should take the game to January 2025. It’s also just another release in the live-service shooter market, which is heavily saturated by long-running titles like Fortnite or Destiny 2, and is about to get the much more anticipated Marvel Rivals in December.

Carli Velocci
Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…
Oh hey, GTA 5 is back on PlayStation Plus this month
Michael on the phone in Grand Theft Auto 5.

November's PlayStation Plus lineup is packed with games this month, both in terms of quality and quantity. However, with Grand Theft Auto 6 on the horizon (hopefully sometime next year), arguably the biggest addition is Grand Theft Auto 5, which is back on the subscription service after leaving earlier this year.

There's not much to say about GTA 5 that hasn't already been said. It's one of the bestselling games of all time and still holds up more than 10 years after release. It's likely you already own it on some platform, but if you somehow don't or just want to play it on the PlayStation 5 or 4, you can play it for free with an Extra or Premium subscription.

Read more
PS5 restock update: Where you can buy a PS5 right now
PS5 and DualSense art.

When the PlayStation 5 first launched back in November 2020, it was nearly impossible to get your hands on the highly anticipated console. Despite demand being through the roof, chip shortages heavily cut production -- and due to sustained consumer interest, it was a problem that plagued the PS5 for years after launch.

Thankfully, we're happy to report that those issues have largely been resolved, making it pretty easy to grab a PS5 these days. The launch of the PS5 Pro has ignited another buying frenzy, and with Black Friday coming up, Sony has even cut the price of the base PS5.

Read more
The PlayStation 5 just got a discount in time for the holidays
A lit table holds a PS5 Pro, and a PS5 all digital, the former standing noticeably taller.

Play Has No Limits | PS5

PlayStation announced its big holiday deal on Tuesday, discounting the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition by $70 from now until December 24, 2024.

Read more