Scuttlebutts said that Sony’s live service flop takes either $50 million or up to $200 million to make. However, it cannot be more far from the truth — in the worst way possible — as a report claims that Concord actually cost $400 million. Speaking to Colin Moriarty, a former IGN journalist and co-founder of KindaFunny, for Sacred Symbol podcast, a verified source revealed several stunning revelations.
First, internally, the project was hailed as “the future of PlayStation” by PlayStation CEO Hermen Hulst. The source said that Hulst expected Concord to blow up like the “Star Wars” universe, allowing the company to revisit it for many cross-media projects. Movies, TV shows, comics, and toy spin-offs, you name it. The collaboration with Amazon’s animated anthology Secret Level was just “scratching the surface.”
Concord was referred to as “Hulst’s baby” and Sony executives believed in the project so much, that lower-level employees couldn’t change things. For that reason, the company decided to finally purchase the developer Firewalk Studio from ProbablyMonsters Inc. But this is where things turn to worse.
According to Moriarty’s source, Concord entered its alpha state in early 2023, at which point around $200 million had already been spent on its development. Lead character designer Jon Weisnewski tweeted that the game had been in development for 8 years prior to its 2024 release.
Sony then decided to invest another $200 million in outsourcing because the project was in a “laughable, horrible shape.” Out of many development issues, two major things for a live service title were not worked on until the last minute:
- Onboarding, how to get new players to play Concord.
- Monetization, to keep the studio’s lights on.
Of course, the $400 million so far hasn’t included the cost to keep Concord servers up and produce future content.
The game’s development itself was marred by what Moriarty describes as a “toxic positivity” culture. No one on the team was allowed to comment if there was anything wrong with the game including character design. Ironically, Concord was codenamed “Chaos” internally during most of its development phase.
In the end, it cost Sony all of its $400 million Concord investment. Despite acquiring $1 million gross revenue, the game was refunded for all players on PlayStation and PC.
This made Concord into Sony’s most expensive first-party game ever — surpassing the likes of Spider-Man and The Last of Us Part II. Both have half the budget; the former cost $270 million while the latter cost $220 million. However, the comparison doesn’t stop there.
Remember Disney’s infamous John Carter film? It cost the Mickey Mouse company $263 million to make and bombed horribly, with an estimated loss of $265 million. Concord might’ve cost Sony double the price of the biggest box office movie flop in the last two decades.
Some X users expressed their sentiment towards Moriarty’s podcast, saying that Sony should’ve invested the money on other projects. Such as a Ghost of Tsushima sequel or even reviving classic fan favorites like inFamous or Jax and Dexter. Nevertheless, some more skeptical users question whether it’s possible to blow that much money on the project.
We definitely can see where they’re coming from, but game development costs have been steadily rising as well. Cyberpunk 2077 cost CDProjekt RED $316 million and miHoyo has spent a total of $700 million for Genshin Impact‘s initial and ongoing development. Not to mention that Sony seems to be banking hard on Concord in terms of marketing. Who knows what it was planning beyond failed merchandise and the Secret Level spot before the game even launched? Concord costs $400 million to make and market could be right on the money.
At this point, we can only hope Sony and other publishers learn from this unfortunate case. However, the PlayStation maker still has two live service games up its sleeve: FAIRGAME$ and Marathon. Let’s see if the third time’s the charm or not. If you’re interested in the more nitty-gritty details, watch the 9 minutes of the podcast clip in the embedded tweet above.
