Sony Reflects on Concord’s Setbacks and Valuable Lessons Gained

In a recent interview, the rocky debut of Concord took center stage as Sony’s president, Hiroki Totoki, shared insights on how the company is gearing up to prevent similar pitfalls with its future game releases. A big part of this approach is putting games through a more thorough testing and evaluation process before they hit the market.

“We’re still in the learning phase,” Hiroki mentioned through an interpreter at a Q&A following Sony’s latest financial report, as reported by VGC. “Especially with new intellectual properties, the outcome is uncertain until we give it a shot. For us, reviewing this, we need multiple checkpoints, including user feedback and internal assessments, and adjust the timing of these evaluations. Ideally, these steps should have occurred much earlier in the process.”

In the same discussion, Hiroki emphasized that Sony is reconsidering its game release schedules to avoid overlap between first-party and third-party launches that might cause sales to compete against each other negatively.

Concord’s launch timing is a case in point—it arrived just days after Black Myth: Wukong, which did exceptionally well on both PS5 and PC. This release also edged it close to other anticipated titles like Star Wars Outlaws and Madden NFL 25. Conversely, the unexpected success of games like Helldivers 2 on PS5 and PC offered Sony valuable lessons for moving forward.

Looking ahead, Sony aims to balance its portfolio with a mix of single-player titles and live-service games. This strategy plays to their strengths while allowing them to experiment with more challenging ventures. It’s not all grim; the financial call also brought some positives—Sony saw growth in its Game and Network Services division, and they shipped 3.8 million PS5 consoles up to the end of September.