Concord's director and founder of Firewalk has reportedly stepped down:

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/concord-game-director-reportedly-steps-down-as-firewalk-developers-fear-layoffs-or-a-possible-closure/

Given how many layoffs and closures we've seen in recent years, the studio's future isn't looking good in the wake of such a historic flop.

The fact that he is stepping down instead of a closure being announced makes me think he was able to convince Sony to keep them around as a support studio at least. I highly doubt Sony will give them any sort of creative control over a game however. 

Diversity for/against arguments are in my opinion... Ridiculous.
Not once in my almost 35~ years of gaming have I ever fired up a game and went: "Gee, I wish this game was more Diverse!" or "Gee! I wish this game was less diverse!".

I take the game at face value, it's either good or bad, but never because of diversity or lack-thereof, it's politicization of the left vs right and it's boring and irrelevant.

I play a game because of the story, I don't really care what gender, age, sex, sexuality, race or more that my protagonist is. If the character is good, the story is good, the gameplay is good... Then the game is good.

No one truly cares about woke vs non-woke.

The game flopped because it was terrible.

Games journalist Colin Moriarty reports he's been in contact with one of the game's developers, who says the game cost a massive $400 million to make and that internally it was viewed as Playstation's "Star Wars moment" and "the future of Playstation".

https://www.psu.com/news/concord-reportedly-cost-400-million-to-make-was-internally-believed-to-be-the-future-of-playstation/

This seems very unlikely.

Public information is that the parent company got $250 million during funding rounds. This gets spread across 3 different studios, only one of which is Firewalk. 

Colin basically claims that Sony spent another $200 million on a game that is in a laughable state, after they got acquired. So basically ~18 months. This is a tall order. Sony's most expensive games cost $200 million over 4-6 years of development. Yet, the claim is that Concord had that much spending in a fraction of that time.

I would guess based on what we know that spending was ~$150 million. Could certainly be a lot higher than that, but I would need to see an actual good source come forward for that.

I wouldn't say the game was in a "laughable state" technically speaking; it's problems were almost entirely a matter of design, not polish or production value. 

Interestingly, the report's claims of a culture of "toxic positivity" within the studio that quashed all negative feedback is being corroborated by others:

https://x.com/ethangach/status/1837163976452411510

Apparently there was a pervasive attitude that they were "too good to fail", while the company's higher ups had their "head in the sand".

""You weren't allowed to say anything internally about this game - about how something's wrong with it, character designs are not right, and so on and so forth. They really truly believed. This was Hermen Hulst's baby, apparently."

You misunderstand.

Colin, the person who was claiming the game cost $400 million, claimed that the game was in a "laughable state in Q1 of 2023", and Sony spent another $200 million to try to fix it. 

Some of that other stuff I think has been brought up, even before Colin. 

A PS "Star Wars moment" like 'lets build off of the originals' would be more accurate.

Episode I, II, III

Episode VII, VIII, IX

PS fans be like:

Ah, my bad, I get what you're referring to now.

Spending $200 million in year and a half is pretty drastic, but the way game development costs are spiralling out of control across the AAA sector, it wouldn't surprise me, especially if they had to bring in a ton of extra help to try to salvage it if it really was in a trainwreck state. Colin cites outsourcing as a major cost, and that tallies with a lot of AAA projects these days.

why was this mov...oh