Key Takeaways
- Marvel Rivals’ director has suggested that Concord failed due to its lack of “unique value”.
- Sasser says that there’s a switching cost for online games, and Concord didn’t do enough to make players move.
- Meanwhile, Rivals offers the ability to play as established and beloved heroes, setting it apart from an original world.
Marvel Rivals director Thaddeus Sasser thinks that PlayStation‘s disastrous attempt at a hero shooter, Concord, flopped because it didn’t offer any “unique value” to players,
When Marvel Rivals was first revealed earlier this year, many of us were quick to write it off as an admittedly stylish Overwatch clone, and one that many didn’t expect to be such a big hit. Well, half a year later, that’s exactly what’s happened as Marvel Rivals has been absolutely killing it in both numbers and player feedback since it launched last week.
Related
Marvel Rivals’ Success Will Be Down To More Than Just Its IP
Keeping people playing a live service game requires more than well-known heroes, and Rivals is already demonstrating it’s well aware of that.
That might make it seem like gamers have a healthy appetite for Hero Shooters of any kind but thanks to Concord, we know that isn’t the case. Without a doubt, Concord is one of the biggest gaming flops of all time and had such an unbelievably small playerbase that PlayStation shut it down two weeks after it launched. So, what’s the difference between Marvel Rivals and Concord?
Marvel Rivals Director Explains Why Concord Flopped
The obvious answer is the good old Marvel IP that’s front and centre, but Marvel Rivals director Thaddeus Sasser has a more interesting answer. As reported by Eurogamer, Sasser took part in the VideoGamer podcast before Rivals’ release and was asked about his thoughts on Concord’s failure considering how it shares a genre with Rivals.
Sasser said that he didn’t think Concord offered anything that couldn’t be found in other games, and certainly not anything strong enough to get over the “switching cost” that players go through when jumping between games. Sasser specifically brings up Overwatch as one of the examples of a big hero shooter that players don’t want to jump over from.
There’s a lot of games that come out that people are like ‘it’s going to do well’ then it flops or people come out and go ‘it’s going to flop’ and it succeeds amazingly. So, I think it’s really hard to tell ahead of time and you’re always worried about that. – Thaddeus Sasser
As for what makes Marvel Rivals unique, Sasser says that being able to play as established Marvel heroes is the cause of the game’s success. Interestingly, Sasser doesn’t mention the unique team-up moves that the heroes have or the melee focus, which are some of the key things that differentiate Rivals from other Hero Shooters.
