Marvel Rivals game director Thaddeus Sasser has said he believes PlayStation sci-fi shooter Concord failed because it didn’t bring anything of “unique value” to its players.
Sasser’s own game Marvel Rivals released last week across PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. After a confident start on Steam specifically, the free-to-play shooter went on to welcome over 10 million players on its debut weekend. In contrast, and despite high hopes from Sony, Concord failed to take off in the same way. Following a lacklustre launch in August, the game was taken offline just two weeks after its PC and PS5 debut.
Speaking on the VideoGamer podcast prior to Marvel Rivals’ release, Sasser said he believed Concord didn’t bring anything original to the table which would entice players to switch over from other popular shooters already on the market. “There’s a switching cost,” the director said. “I’ve already invested in Overwatch, I’ve got 15 skins for Pharah, I’m not going anywhere.”
“As a game developer you’re always worried until the audience has responded,” the Marvel Rivals director continued, admitting he was cautious about releasing another free-to-play hero shooter onto the market.
“The truth is that I don’t think anybody can accurately predict this or the game industry would be radically different today. 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.”
Sasser believes Marvel Rivals has the fact that players can take on the guise of well known superheroes in its favour, and this hook gives people a reason to check out the game.
“I don’t know about you, but when I heard the concept of the game I was like ‘Oh my God I want to go be Storm in a game’, ‘I want to go be Doctor Strange in a game’. I want to be those heroes in the game, that sounds awesome,” he said.
“And of course my mind immediately leapt to all the cool possibilities you could have with that. That’s what I think will pull people in as well too. If we’ve done our jobs well, they’ll love what they play and they’ll want to play some more.”
The numbers speak for themselves. At the time of writing, there are still 197,120 Steam players in the game, with a 24 hour concurrent player peak of 441,152. Its Steam reviews, meanwhile, sit with a ‘Mostly Positive’ average.
As for Concord, back in November Sony’s president Hiroki Totoki reflected on the brief release and failure of the company’s live-service effort, stating “we are still in the process of learning”.
The company exec added when it comes to a new IP, “you don’t know the result until you actually try it”.
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