The events surrounding PlayStation during the week of September 2, 2024, will surely become the textbook example to illustrate the meaning of the word “whiplash.”
On Tuesday, Sony announced that Concord, its brand-new live service hero shooter, would be pulled from stores, with all players refunded. The decision wasn’t because of a buggy release, a la Cyberpunk 2077. It was because the game severely and historically underperformed, with a peak of less than 700 concurrent players during its opening weekend.
On Thursday, just two days later, Sony saw the release of their subsidiary Team Asobi’s new 3D platformer, Astro Bot. The game was released to a whopping cumulative Metacritic score of 94/100. To say the reviews of the game are positive would be an understatement. Reviewers are comparing the game favorably to Super Mario Galaxy, widely considered the pinnacle of 3D Mario games. I’ve seen several reviewers say Astro Bot is one of, if not the, best game Sony has ever produced.
The two games have several key differences, all of which offer incisive insight into why one failed so spectacularly while the other soared to heights unseen by nearly any previous Sony game.
Hi Sony, please learn the right lessons
In a time when the video game industry is undergoing historic shifts, Astro Bot offers a model upon which the industry can build a bright future. Its development was the polar opposite of Concord.
For one, Concord was developed by Firewalk Studios, which had 150 employees when it was formally acquired by Sony in 2023. Astro Bot’s Team Asobi, on the other hand, is just 60 people, and it’s an incredibly tight-knit group. Some of them have been working together for the better part of a decade.
In a wonderful interview with Forbes’ Jason Schreier, Astro Bot’s director made the advantages of such a small workforce abundantly clear. The entire team got together every two weeks to play the game. After each play-through, every member of the team would write down one thing they liked about the game and one thing they felt needed to be improved—which means every team member’s voice was regularly heard throughout development.
The development cycle was another key difference, too. Concord was developed over a jaw-droppingly long eight-year period, which meant that it completely shot over the hero shooter trend (and the Marvel-like goodwill) that it was aiming to capitalize on. Astro Bot, on the other hand, took only three years—which is perfectly reasonable, because the game can be finished in under 15 hours.
The smaller workforce and shorter development time also mean that Astro Bot doesn’t have to sell an astronomical amount of copies before it’s profitable—a huge issue plaguing the AAA game space, where games can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce.
Lastly, and most importantly, Concord is a game that was so obviously made to respond to player “trends.” It was Sony’s bid to enter the bloated live service space. It was supposed to capitalize on a hero shooter kick that had long since sailed, using Guardians of the Galaxy-like characters when the general public is facing Marvel fatigue.
By stark contrast, Astro Bot is simply Astro Bot. The game references and celebrates various Sony IPs and hardware, but it still manages to feel timeless. It’s not chasing anything other than providing a good, fun game.
Clearly, that strategy worked out.
Published: Sep 7, 2024 10:56 am