Games Media Personnel Debunk Claims of Concord’s $400 Million Budget

With Concord crashing hard and loud, it’s been the talk of the video game industry the past few weeks, and it doesn’t seem like the chatter will stop anytime soon. Just yesterday, a rumor surfaced from former IGN games media journalist Colin Moriarty that Sony spent a whopping $400 million on Concord.

We here at MP1st, didn’t report on it, as that amount seems too absurd to be true. Now, we’re not saying Colin is lying or anything, but it wasn’t something we thought held much water, so we refrained from reporting on it. Now,  Christopher Dring, head of respected gaming publication GamesIndustry has debunked this claim:

Because no game has that dev budget. The press reports are the laughing stock of the industry. Concord didn’t even get any above-the-line marketing spend

— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) September 21, 2024

Dring’s statement rings true — especially when it comes to above-the-line (ATL) marketing spend. For those not aware of what this means, this is the term used by companies when targeting a large audience, and this means ads on radio, TV, print media, magazines, billboards, online publications, etc. I mean, wasn’t one of the main headscratchers when it comes to Concord’s release is we really didn’t hear Sony market it much?

Adding further veracity to this $400M claim is Kotaku Senior Report Ethan Ganch who also mentions that this number is also not what they heard.

I haven’t been able to confirm the budget yet but $400 million is not the number I’ve heard.

— AmericanTruckSongs9 (@ethangach) September 20, 2024

Obviously, all this chatter would end right away if Sony or someone at Firewalk revealed just how much the development budget is, but I highly doubt that’ll happen anytime soon.

There is another possibility of where that budget number came from. Sony had purchased Firewalk Studio for an undisclosed amount in 2023. There is a possibility that the budget that Colin heard was also taking into the amount spent on the studio. The purchase isn’t something that should be factored into the game’s budget, considering that cost to purchase the studio was, well, for the studio, but it is a possibility why that number is so high.

With Concord’s server shutdown this September 6, this marks an end to Firewalk’s debut game for Sony, and possibly the publisher’s biggest failure in PlayStation history. Based on Sony’s wording on it, it does seem like there is a chance the game can see a relaunch as a free-to-play game, though even with that, it still has an uphill climb given the stigma associated with the game’s brand.

Will we really know what happened with Concord’s development? Perhaps if people behind the game eventually talk, but until then, expect to hear rumors, reports and other insider knowledge seep out for us to digest.

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