Sony Should Should Learn How It’s Done From Marvel Rivals After Its $400 Million Disaster

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Sony Should Should Learn How It’s Done From Marvel Rivals After Its $400 Million Disaster

Big games like XDefiant, Concord, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League have all failed to find a market, making 2024 a terrible year for publishers releasing new live service games.

Marvel Rivals has been released on December 6, 2024. | Credit: NetEase Games.

On the other hand, Marvel Rivals, a superhero shooter, has already achieved one of the largest free-to-play launches in Steam history, so this week’s release may have defied the trend.

Marvel Rivals Has Knocked Off all the Hero Shooter Odds

Shortly after its launch last night, Marvel Rivals peaked with 444,286 concurrent players on Steam, according to

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, but that obviously doesn’t even include players on consoles or those using the standalone PC launch. The MMO Lost Ark, which attracted an incredible 1,325,305 concurrent players on its first day on Valve’s platform, is the biggest launch for a new free-to-play game ever,

Marvel Rivals just launched and is already breaking records…a hero-shooter just like Concord

Concord apologists told me that it failed just “because that market is already saturated”

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Take a look at the character designs from each game. What do you notice?

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— Noir 浮世 (@madcap412)

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That statistic has some qualifiers, though, as a number of games that were first available on Steam as paid titles before switching to free play saw higher sales on the day they were made available to the public.

This was true of PUBG and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Warzone 2.0 and Counter-Strike 2 relaunches also drew larger concurrent player counts. Marvel Rivals is in good company, though, given that we’re discussing some of the most popular free-to-play games ever created here.

It feels absolutely amazing to see a new live-service game perform this well at launch, especially considering the headlines they have a tendency to produce in 2024.

Publisher Warner Bros. found Suicide Squad to be a financial letdown, Ubisoft’s XDefiant is failing and many developers will be let go as a result, and Concord closed a few weeks after its debut, with its development studio following shortly after. Also, do you recall Foamstars? In 2024, Square Enix’s forgettable foam party shooter was released and its updates were terminated shortly.

Why Did Concord Fail?

Concord doesn’t exist anymore. | Credit: Firewalk Studios.

The company that made Concord, Firewalk Studios, was purchased by Sony in 2023. With custom cinematography and a long-term development plan that would have cost at least $100 million more than the $400 million development cost, Concord was an expensive game after eight years of development.

It sold less than 25,000 copies in its two weeks on the market, according to estimates. This is shocking, even given the other bad news developers and studios have been receiving this year.

It entered the crowded hero shooter market, where Valorant, Overwatch, and Apex Legends were already popular games among players. Sony’s marketing strategy for the game also seemed to be failing because, before its release, very few people knew about Concord. Additionally, its generic characters and design were criticized, which lacked any particularly interesting gameplay ideas.

The demise of Concord also represents existential problems in modern game development, such as the expensive and drawn-out process that can make a game unsatisfactory years before it is released. Because of all of this, publishers are risk averse, but if you’re just trying to copy what’s popular, it will be out of date by the time you finish it.

It has to do with taste. Naturally, there is a sizable market for live-service multiplayer games; most of those people are just already playing one.

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#Sony #Learn #Marvel #Rivals #Million #Disaster

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