Astro Bot Is Shaping up to Be the Galactic PlayStation Adventure Concord Failed to Be
Concord's failure could be Astro Bot's success with a vast difference in the enthusiasm they have managed to generate among players.
- Concord's disappointing player count on Steam is sure to give Firewalk Studios a few reasons to go back to the drawing board.
- However, Team Asobi is sure to celebrate a very succesful launch for Astro Bot in September this year.
- Sony Interactive Entertainment would do well to ponder what went wrong with Concord by taking a look at Astro Bot's success.
It’s a strange time for Sony Interactive Entertainment, with Firewalk Studios’ Concord failing to catch the attention of its potential player base while Team Asobi’s Astro Bot is making waves with its quirky eccentricities and gorgeously designed world.
While both studios are under the Sony-owned PlayStation Studios umbrella, it seems that their respective titles are far apart in their quality, with Concord’s sci-fi setting failing to be engaging to its players and Astro Bot’s galaxy-spanning adventure taking its players across locations and eras taken from a long line of all-time greats on the PlayStation.
A Debut for Firewalk That Could Have Gone Better
Founded in 2018 and acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2023, Firewalk Studios would have hoped for a better response from players when it released the closed beta for Concord in July this year. Despite a promising setting and an ongoing narrative that updates every week, the studio’s first-person PvP shooter has failed to make a name for itself in a saturated genre.
With its numbers on Steam showcasing an underwhelming showing for the game, it is indeed a dismal first outing for the studio and a potential reason for Sony Interactive Entertainment to do a bit of introspecting as to what could have gone wrong with a game that initially showed a lot of promise.
Astro Bot Is the Other Side of the Same Coin
Team Asobi, on the other hand, is enjoying a lot of positive attention for its work on the sequel to Astro’s Playroom, an engaging title that came preinstalled on every PlayStation 5 as a showcase of its new features, including its revamped graphical capabilities and well-implemented haptic feedback mechanics on its new DualSense controllers.
With over 80 levels, six galaxies, 50 planets, and tons of PlayStation references and characters, Astro Bot is shaping up to be a very exciting romp through the console’s history of exclusive titles, with a massive number of cameo appearances from some of gaming’s most beloved characters being a part of the game.
Team Asobi has risen to the challenge, crafting an experience that has resonated with its players even before Astro Bot releases in September this year.
The contrast in comparison to Concord is a curious case of two games coming from the same publisher that are so vastly different in their presentation and mechanics that they have garnered such varying responses from their respective player bases.
Firewalk Studios would certainly want to learn a thing or two from Team Asobi and hope that its next project can repair the damage left behind by Concord.
Meanwhile, PlayStation fans can take a trip down memory lane when Astro Bot launches on September 6.
