PlayStation Thread: Horizon Forbidden Door

[Ryback on a Pole!]

Sept 3, 2024 13:07:59 GMT -5 The Captain said:

The usual suspects are already crowing about go woke, go broke when Concord was a mediocre game with zero hype or marketing in an insanely crowded space.

I like how the go woke get broke crowd just tend to ignore games like BG3. They don't count, I guess.

I am sure they will ignore the next Dragon's Age and its inevitable success too because it doesn't fit their agenda.

[The Captain]

Sept 3, 2024 13:43:15 GMT -5 Ryback on a Pole! said:

Sept 3, 2024 13:07:59 GMT -5 The Captain said:

The usual suspects are already crowing about go woke, go broke when Concord was a mediocre game with zero hype or marketing in an insanely crowded space.

I like how the go woke get broke crowd just tend to ignore games like BG3. They don't count, I guess.

I am sure they will ignore the next Dragon's Age and its inevitable success too because it doesn't fit their agenda.

Whenever BG3 is pointed out they twist themselves into knots about how that game doesn't count lol.

[Kalmia]

Add me to the list of people that hadn't heard about Concord until it had already flopped.

[Totorob101]

I liked the design of the characters from Concord and was very tempted to buy it but glad I didnt,a shame that this has happened though.

[hashtagdaley/JudasDay]

Every time there was a hype event for Concord (I remember 2 on various Days of Play, or game shows of some kind) the cutscenes kind of grabbed my attention.

… and then gameplay showed it was a hero shooter and I lost any and all interest immediately.

[Ryushinku]

I don't have a PS5 so it's less likely I'd have heard of Concord anyway.

But I've been reading up on it now, and goddamn. That's a disaster. Like, I thought Kill The Suicide Squad would have bomb of the year all sewn up, but here comes Concord.

Just seems like major wrong decisions made every step of the way. From concept to design to execution to marketing.

[BorneAgain]

I would say that Concord is similar to something like the Atari E.T. game, but not for the reasons one might think. I think both were ultimately guilty of not really being bad games (even Concord at its worst appears to be a competent albeit unspectacular Hero Shooter), but at the unluckiest possible times symbols of the worst trends in the gaming market.

E.T. was emblematic of Atari's overreliance on licensed releases, allowing the industry to become excessively flooded with product, and generally not paying attention to how the market was evolving with both third parties on top of the numerous places cartridges were being sold. The game itself, while being a waste of the expensive license and much too unintuitive for the average player is functional to the point where if you know what you're doing you can hypothetically have some fun with. However, the damage was done, and it was the tipping point to all of Atari (and specifically Ray Kassar's) business mistakes.

In that same fashion, regardless of the few fans that have discovered it's a reasonably okay release Concord is being viewed as the natural end point of all the dubious trends in the 8th/9th generations:

-Overbudgeted, with a rumored cost of 200 million plus to make
-Acting as a blatantly obvious trend chaser, stepping into an already crowded Hero Shooter genre & lacking any new ideas for it
-Excessively long development time, to the point where the trends its chasing were much more in vogue 6-7 years ago when its real production began
-Design sensibilities as done by committee, with any coherence or charm to the characters stripped away in favor of a corporate facsimile of quirky
-Being another live service release when that niche is already being seen with increasing skepticism about its viability and potential for developer greed
-An out of touch understanding of the consumer market with a $40 price tag that was laughable to fans that could play more interesting games for free

In the grand scheme the actual quality of either title is really irrelevant to both essentially being seen as representative of everything that had and now has gone wrong with gaming.

[Jedi-El of Tomorrow]

Sept 3, 2024 17:02:12 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

I would say that Concord is similar to something like the Atari E.T. game, but not for the reasons one might think. I think both were ultimately guilty of not really being bad games (even Concord at its worst appears to be a competent albeit unspectacular Hero Shooter), but at the unluckiest possible times symbols of the worst trends in the gaming market.

E.T. was emblematic of Atari's overreliance on licensed releases, allowing the industry to become excessively flooded with product, and generally not paying attention to how the market was evolving with both third parties on top of the numerous places cartridges were being sold. The game itself, while being a waste of the expensive license and much too unintuitive for the average player is functional to the point where if you know what you're doing you can hypothetically have some fun with. However, the damage was done, and it was the tipping point to all of Atari (and specifically Ray Kassar's) business mistakes.

In that same fashion, regardless of the few fans that have discovered it's a reasonably okay release Concord is being viewed as the natural end point of all the dubious trends in the 8th/9th generations:

-Overbudgeted, with a rumored cost of 200 million plus to make
-Acting as a blatantly obvious trend chaser, stepping into an already crowded Hero Shooter genre & lacking any new ideas for it
-Excessively long development time, to the point where the trends its chasing were much more in vogue 6-7 years ago when its real production began
-Design sensibilities as done by committee, with any coherence or charm to the characters stripped away in favor of a corporate facsimile of quirky
-Being another live service release when that niche is already being seen with increasing skepticism about its viability and potential for developer greed
-An out of touch understanding of the consumer market with a $40 price tag that was laughable to fans that could play more interesting games for free

In the grand scheme the actual quality of either title is really irrelevant to both essentially being seen as representative of everything that had and now has gone wrong with gaming.

That's not nice, Concord had 8 years of development, E.T. didn't even get 8 weeks.

[Scoops]

Preordered Astrobot so I could get the mini comic it comes with. Hopefully Walmart will deliver it before Friday.

Tying this back to Concord, there's also some people trying to claim that it's good to celebrate its failure because Sony supposedly killed Sony Japan for Concord when they didn't, and they would have gotten Gravity Rush 3 if this didn't happen or something. I'm sure this is going to get more insufferable when Astrobot reviews and sells well enough, and the discourse turns to "SEE, Now imagine how many more amazing games we would have gotten if Sony Japan wasn't downsized to Team Asobi!? If only Sony wasn't so xenophobic against the Japanese (Yes, they are actually saying the last part)".

[Feargus McReddit]

The funny thing about all of this (or about as funny as it can be) was that No Man Sky, literally today, released an update that added a tonne more features to it which is something they've been doing since their launch. Was it the game they promised it would be from the marketing of launch? No, but instead of bailing on it, Hello Games changed directions, put the work in and came up with something that is evolving to the game it wanted to be.

Sony got a team to put 8 years into this game based on a market that has changed so much that the games it's up against peaked and fell in that time and then had no plan for what happened if it did fail. Especially when Concord's appearing on that Amazon video game short series! They couldn't even make it last to then.

Also on the Gravity Rush 3 point Scoops brought up, one of the reasons Sony ended Sony Japan was because nobody really brought Gravity Rush 2. So, like...what are we doing there?

[Ryback on a Pole!]

Gotta admit after playing Outlaws a lot now, the mercenary contracts are a complete waste of time.

All pretty much the same thing, time consuming and for a paltry award--just a few hundred credits. I've done maybe half a dozen and decided I'm not gonna bother any more. Just gonna do the main quests and the odd story-related side quest that has a decent reward.

[Feargus McReddit]

On a happier note, Vampire Survivors finally got on PS this week considering how long it's been out for and...yeah, I get why people like this thing. It's a blast. It cost me about 4 Euro and worth every penny of that.

[The Captain]

Sept 4, 2024 3:07:35 GMT -5 Scoops said:

Preordered Astrobot so I could get the mini comic it comes with. Hopefully Walmart will deliver it before Friday.

Tying this back to Concord, there's also some people trying to claim that it's good to celebrate its failure because Sony supposedly killed Sony Japan for Concord when they didn't, and they would have gotten Gravity Rush 3 if this didn't happen or something. I'm sure this is going to get more insufferable when Astrobot reviews and sells well enough, and the discourse turns to "SEE, Now imagine how many more amazing games we would have gotten if Sony Japan wasn't downsized to Team Asobi!? If only Sony wasn't so xenophobic against the Japanese (Yes, they are actually saying the last part)".

Oh yes, the Japanese company is xenophobic against the Japanese. These people are so un-serious.

[chrom]

Sept 4, 2024 10:58:44 GMT -5 The Captain said:

Sept 4, 2024 3:07:35 GMT -5 Scoops said:

Preordered Astrobot so I could get the mini comic it comes with. Hopefully Walmart will deliver it before Friday.

Tying this back to Concord, there's also some people trying to claim that it's good to celebrate its failure because Sony supposedly killed Sony Japan for Concord when they didn't, and they would have gotten Gravity Rush 3 if this didn't happen or something. I'm sure this is going to get more insufferable when Astrobot reviews and sells well enough, and the discourse turns to "SEE, Now imagine how many more amazing games we would have gotten if Sony Japan wasn't downsized to Team Asobi!? If only Sony wasn't so xenophobic against the Japanese (Yes, they are actually saying the last part)".

Oh yes, the Japanese company is xenophobic against the Japanese. These people are so un-serious.

Like calling Elmer Fudd the symbol of Toxic Masculinity

[Vice honcho room temperature]

Can anyone sum up Concord for me? Like why did it take so long and why is it apart of a culture war and why was it so expensive yet I saw nothing about it marketing wise

[Ryback on a Pole!]

Sept 4, 2024 12:02:10 GMT -5 Vice honcho room temperature said:

Can anyone sum up Concord for me? Like why did it take so long and why is it apart of a culture war and why was it so expensive yet I saw nothing about it marketing wise

I can answer the middle one.

Neckbeards and incels jumped on it as an example of "go woke get broke" when in reality it failed for a whole numbers of reasons (it being shit, an overcrowded market being two of)

[salz4life]

You'd think the "Go Woke Get Broke" gimmick would've ended with the success of the movie, Barbie... but alas.

[Scoops]

Sept 4, 2024 8:31:08 GMT -5 Feargus McReddit said:

The funny thing about all of this (or about as funny as it can be) was that No Man Sky, literally today, released an update that added a tonne more features to it which is something they've been doing since their launch. Was it the game they promised it would be from the marketing of launch? No, but instead of bailing on it, Hello Games changed directions, put the work in and came up with something that is evolving to the game it wanted to be.

Sony got a team to put 8 years into this game based on a market that has changed so much that the games it's up against peaked and fell in that time and then had no plan for what happened if it did fail. Especially when Concord's appearing on that Amazon video game short series! They couldn't even make it last to then.

Also on the Gravity Rush 3 point Scoops brought up, one of the reasons Sony ended Sony Japan was because nobody really brought Gravity Rush 2. So, like...what are we doing there?

Well, their argument is that GR is cheaper and sold more. Which is a decent argument but the obvious conclusion is "Okay, now neither game gets a sequel". This also ignores that Sony's shift towards western developers plan has been mostly a huge success with Horizon, Ghost of Shushima, GoW Reboots, Last of Us, and even Days Gone selling great. The failure has been going all in on Live Service.

Edit: Also, talking about No Man's Sky. I don't think that's exactly a fair comparison to make because NMS was still a massive success at launch that they had reason and incentive to keep trying. A better comparison to NMS would be Cyberpunk.

[Feargus McReddit]

Sony: We don’t have that many PlayStation based IPs

Also Sony: Answer this fun question based on our countless IPs!

[Totorob101]

If I had to pick three out of those lot it'll definitely be Kratos, Snake and Aloy. Quite surprised how many IPs PlayStation has, I think I have played every one of those characters games to, bar sly cooper which I have been thought about playing but never did.