The numbers from the open beta of “Concord” are somewhat worrying

Concord will be Sony’s latest foray into live multiplayer titles, this time a live-action shooter along the lines of Overwatch and Valorant with its hero-based gameplay. But with just over a month to go until release, open beta numbers we can see that it is… somewhat worrying.

Here’s what happens:

• On the day of the open beta launch, Concord reached a peak of 2,388 players on Steam. This is different from the closed beta that happened a week ago, where you had to pre-order the game on Steam to play it, and that peaked at about a third of that number. This beta is open to everyone. Let’s say that number even triples as the weekend goes on, and that’s still less than 10,000 concurrent players.

• We don’t know the PlayStation numbers, as they aren’t available or widely shared. I don’t know if the betas can show up in the PlayStation top 10 list, but they haven’t. It may well be doing better on PlayStation, but it’s important to remember that its other live service hit, Helldivers 2, had far more players on PC than it did on console.
• The open beta is also… free. One of Concord’s big problems is that it costs $40 at a time when nearly all of its hero shooters are free, from Apex to Overwatch to Valorant, not to mention staples like Fortnite. Helldivers 2 was the same price, but in a radically different genre.
• Overall, feedback on Concord’s gameplay has been positive in terms of how well it works as a shooter. However, criticism has been that it doesn’t stand out enough in the genre and that its hero-based cast, which is promised to see more of its story this week, lacks personality at the moment.

It’s unclear what Sony’s expectations are for Concord in terms of performance. It seems like it’ll be a much more traditional multiplayer game than Helldivers with an actual seasonal cadence and new hero introductions and the like. But if that’s the case, Also If the game looks like established rivals and fails to break through, that’s a clear problem. And 2,000 to 10,000 free players in open beta for a $40 game doesn’t seem like the best indicator of widespread interest.

We’ll know more when the actual launch comes around, and of course, it’s possible that for some reason the game ends up being much more successful on PlayStation than it was on PC. I’m certainly not ruling it out, but the data at this point doesn’t seem out of this world.

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