Concord was in development for around eight years according to the developers from Firewalk Studios. Despite the backing of one of gaming’s most popular publishers, the title never found its footing: Sony announced its shutdown less than two weeks after release, and the company also refunded bought copies.
Some have attributed Concord’s failure to its long development cycle leading to the fully-priced game releasing in a saturated genre, and a genre in which most games are based on a free-to-play model. However, Streams Charts is more interested in the game’s performance on livestreaming platforms, and how its viewership compares to other titles. We have calculated the viewership statistics for the game’s release, compared it to other recent releases, and its own beta test.
How Concord’s beta came surprisingly close to Helldivers 2’s viewership
Concord’s short open beta lasted from July 12 to 22, and during this time the game generated 1.24M Hours Watched on Twitch, a strong collection for the beta period. This was because Sony sponsored the many highly-popular global creators to advertise the title, which also contributed to the game’s six-figure peak concurrent viewership.
North American creators, like LIRIK, Shroud, and Tarik, were only the top of the iceberg when it comes to those paid to advertise the beta. The game was also promoted by popular Spanish content creators like Auronplay, as well as German streamers like NoWay4u_Sir. Essentially, the game was highly advertised across many of Twitch’s most popular demographics, by top streamers for each audience. In total, more than 95% of the game’s open beta Twitch viewership came from sponsored broadcasts, which also means that the game generated little organic traffic on the livestreaming platform.
The many advertisements on Twitch from top creators also led to the Viewers per Channel metric becoming especially inflated, reaching 755 concurrent viewers per channel on average for the entire beta period. Concord did record strong raw metrics during the beta period, and high viewership could lead to exposure. But, by the time of the game’s release, the title was covered by fewer sponsored streamers, and its viewership could not stand on its own.
The game’s official release on August 20 was subject to lower viewership than hoped for. During its first week, Concord accumulated 280.9K Hours Watched and reached 27.6K Peak Viewers on Twitch. Significantly, a large portion of this viewership again came from sponsored streams.
Concord’s highly-sponsored open beta could have brought in new potential viewers through exposure to fans of top streamers, however, it seems to have had the opposite effect, and viewers had their fill of the title after the short beta. Many of the world’s most popular Twitch content creators were not involved in the game’s coverage during release. This led to a much more successful beta than the official release.
Viewership for Concord continued to fall significantly, although it did not have much time to prove itself. On September 3rd, Sony announced the game’s shutdown, and it had only received 40K Hours Watched the week prior. With Concord officially behind us, Streams Charts collected data on Sony’s published titles since 202, to compare it to other titles.
Is Concord Sony’s worst release in livestreaming?
Concord was one of Sony’s least-watched releases in recent memory, but not its worst. The game only outperformed four of Sony’s releases since 2022, which includes Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy - Remastered. Concord was not able to match up to most of Sony’s releases, even falling significantly behind The Last of Us Part I, the remaster of the beloved title.
Ultimately, Concord’s audience fell short of most of Sony’s releases, and far behind the company’s most popular releases, including the shooter which was one of 2024’s most popular releases, HELLDIVERS™ 2. Usually, we expect multiplayer games to perform better statistically in livestreaming, but Sony’s single-player releases have been some of the world’s favourites in recent years. God of War: Ragnarok and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 are the two most-watched Sony releases since 2022, with 26.83M HW and 10.06M HW, respectively.
On the complete other side of the spectrum from God of War and Spider-Man, Concord was among the 5 least-watched titles released by Sony since 2022, and it was the only real AAA release among these games. The game received more watch time than only four other releases. The most-watched of the bottom four was an untitled remaster for its PC release, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy - Remastered.
The other three titles were all Virtual Reality games, which are seemingly not appealing to livestreamers nor viewers. The most-watched of these was Horizon: Call of the Mountain, a VR venture from the Horizon series, which came as a PS5 launch title for its VR capability. This game enjoyed 53.5K Hours Watched, whereas the other two VR titles struggled to hit five digits.
Budget highs and lows: Concord compared to indie titles
Most games published by major companies like Sony are heavily advertised in advance at popular events — such as Concord’s announcement at the 2023 PlayStation Showcase — and have the budget to sponsor a wide range of livestreaming stars. However, across 2024 so far, Concord’s viewership was similar to that of games published by indie companies.
For example, The Game of Sisyphus, released on April 11 and published by an independent studio Cream Games from Korea, was able to generate 619K Hours Watched more than Concord. Another example of an indie-published title is Animal Well by Bigmode. The game is the first title of the Shared Memory studio, but it was published by Bigmode, a new publishing company that wants to highlight independent and well-crafted games. Animal Well was released in May this year and came very close to matching Concord’s watch time.
Bigmode was created by YouTuber VideoGameDunkey, who goes by dunkstream on Twitch. The North American creator made many YouTube videos focusing on the game in the weeks before its release and also held the Bigmode Game Jam 2024 on his Twitch, a presentation for his publishing company. His advertising of the game powered by his social media presence helped Animal Well achieve a viewership similar to Sony’s recent release.
Animal Well, was released on May 9th, and as such had a head start on Concord. The single-player title reached 1.59M Hours Watched by the end of August, running just short of matching Concord’s short sponsorship-fuelled run.
In summary, despite a strong peak during its beta, Concord’s overall watch time was matched by titles like Animal Well and many other smaller releases. Other AAA releases soared ahead of Concord, even the less popular ones: WWE 2K24 received almost double Concord’s release watch time, and Sony’s new title could not even match 20% of the release viewership reached by Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.
How Concord ranks against failed releases from other publishers
Concord was not the least-watched game released by a world-famous publisher this year, but it was the least popular AAA title. While other publishing houses releases games, this did not meet the long-development cycle, budget, or marketing of Concord. Industry-leader Ubisoft released The Rogue Prince of Persia into early access, an upcoming small 2D roguelike part of the Prince of Persia franchise. The game received 234.5K Hours Watched during its early access period, and was, unfortunately, Ubisoft’s least-watched release of the year.
Bandai Namco Entertainment published Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash, a fighting game based on the popular manga and anime series. Although these anime-inspired fighting games have been highly popular in the past, the recent endeavour by Bandai received only 155.7K Hours Watched during its opening week, and viewership has only fallen.
Square Enix developed and published an original title this year: SaGa: Emerald Beyond. The game is an entry to the SaGa series, which began in 1989, the role-playing game was the first SaGa title in almost a decade. Despite the history around this release, it struggled to generate any viewership on release, receiving only 49.6K Hours Watched. Although developed by Square Enix, the game did not receive the love that the Final Fantasy series does.
Konami recorded the least-watched game, with only 15K Hours Watched received during its opening week. The release was Cygni: All Guns Blazing, a shoot-em up game heavily inspired by 2D retro games of the past. The game’s trailer on YouTube has only 19K views, and it seems most fans of Konami were not even aware that this game released.
In summary, Concord was not the least-watched release of 2024; however, it did spend heavily on sponsorships which boosted its viewers, and even then it struggled to outperform other indie titles with much smaller campaigns. Indie titles with a functioning low-budget marketing style were even able to match Concord’s inflated viewership.
After Sony stopped paying for these sponsorships, almost all of Concord’s viewership disappeared, along with the game’s player count. Despite the game exposing itself to millions through its highly advertised open beta and another advertised launch, it couldn’t capture the attention of gamers nor streamers.
