Summary
- Sony has plans to launch 12 live-service games in a poorly thought out attempt to push ahead in the already very saturated market. While its first venture, Helldivers 2, has done pretty well, its latest release, Concord, never managed to break 1,000 concurrent players and is now in the double digits.
- We just saw the former PlayStation exclusive Foamstars go fully free-to-play in an attempt to boost its dwindling player numbers, which has led many gamers to question if Concord will have to go the same way to maintain any player base at all.
- While live-service games may struggle to convince players to pay upfront (as has been Sony's model so far), I hate to see Concord go back on its pay-first strategy when it's this price tag that allows live-service games to monetise less agressively and more fairly.
There are two kinds of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:live-service games – those you pay upfront for, and free-to-play titles. Both try to make money by slapping dollar signs on stuff, though some games use scummier tactics than others. For obvious reasons, free-to-play games have more incentive to double down on squeezing players for as much money as humanly possible, with the worst offenders 168澳洲幸运ꦡ5开奖网:locking entire mechanics behind a paywa🐻ll so you have to pay not just to win, but even to play as intended. But that doesn’t mean that paid games don’t do the same, of course. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Just look at Diablo 4’s skins.
Sony’s ‘Pay First’ Live-Service Strategy
In 2022, announced a 1🔯68澳洲幸运5开奖网:wildly ill-advised push into live-service games and announced it had a whopping 12 in the works. Late last year, the company said six of those would be released in the ಌ2025 financial year, with the rest still up in the air. A mere month later, Naughty Dog’s attempt at entering the multiplayer space 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:was cancelled.
And yet, it’s still pushing on with a strategy that basically anybody could tell you is a terrible idea. , its single major success so far, was received very positively and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:still has quite a healthy player base, despite 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:having lost a large portion of꧃ players in a typical pattern of attrition for the genre. The latest of Sony’s live-service releases, , 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:never broke 1,000 players on , and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:has been losing players since.
Both of these games launched with price tags, though they’ve had slightly varying approaches to monetisation. Helldivers 2 has been 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:widely praised for its Warbonds and very fair monetisation. Concord 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:doesn’t have ba🍬ttle passes at all, though it .
Will Concord Have To Go Free-To-Play Like Foamstars?
Now, let me point your attention to ’s , which was released in February to a middling reception and fizzled out quickly after. Foamstars was picked up by Sony as a month-long exclusive, and is now 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:going fully free-to-play in an attempt to revive the game ♓by drawiღng in new players.
You can currently only play Foamstars on PS4 and PS5. The exclusivity window has passed, though, so w🐻e may see Square bring the game to other platforms in the future.
Despite having an upfront price tag, Foamstars has been 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:criticised 𝄹for its expensive cosmetics and has always been monetised almost like a free-to-play game. It’s unclear how this move to free-to-play will affect its monetisation, but I doubt it’ll🙈 be in a good way. Regardless, the players who have stuck around seem pretty excited about the prospect of actuall🍨y having people to play with, so good for them.
This isn’t the first live-service game to go free-to-play after player numbers dwindled, but it’s a reminder of a rather unsavoury reality, and I’m starting to wonder if Concord will go the same way. It seems from Helldivers 2 and Concord that Sony will be releasing other games on its slate at the same $40 price point, though it hasn’t made any commitment to that. That price point seems to be specifically geared to enable less predatory monetisation tactics in a gamble to win over players 🐷sick of free-to-pl📖ay games trying to take their money at every turn.
But trying to convince players to shell out for a live-service game before playing it is significantly harder when there are so many far more established free-to-play competitors in the space. The console exclusivity certainly makes things harder, though Sony has done the smart thing and simultaneously released them on PC with crossplay to soften the impact on player numbers. Free-to-play games generally hugely boost player numbers, something that Concord in particular﷽ sorely needs. I’m unsure how Concord will survive even t🐭he next two months without drastically boosting its player count.
At the time of writing, there are 68 people pꩲlaying Concord on Steam. The 24-hour p🥂eak was 198.
And yet, I’m hesitant to say I want Concord to go the same way as so many other live-service games. Fewer and less preꦕdatory microtransactions are always a good thing, and making these games paid instead of free-to-play enables that. $40 isn’t a ton of money, considering we’re coming to a point where triple-A games can cost double that, and significantly more for special editions.
I’d happily pay upfront for a game knowing it won’t try to squeeze me for more, but most players don’t feel the same.🌳 Even with open betas, Concord simply wasn’t original enough to sway players away from the similar, free-to-play games they were already playing. I want there to be space in the live-service genre for games to eradicate the worst forms of monetisation, but so far, Helldivers 2 is looking like a fluke. Sony will probably have to change its strategy with Concord, and I hate that. It probably shouldn’t have greenlit all those live-service games, huh?
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Concord
- Top Critic Avg: 64/100 Critics Rec: 23%
- Released
- August 23, 2024
- ESRB
- t
- Developer(s)
- Fi𓆏rewalk Studios
- Publisher(s)
- Sony 🌟Interac🌠tive Entertainment
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
Concord is an upcoming FPS from Firewalk Studios, part of the Pl♔ayStation Studios family. A PvP multiplayer title, it is slated for launch on both PS5 and PC in 2024.
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