PS5 hero shooter Concord needs an outstanding beta or it could be dead on arrival

If you haven’t heard much about upcoming hero shooter Concord, you’re probably not alone.

The first-party Sony title, coming to both PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam, kicks off its early access beta tomorrow and there has been little pomp and circumstance surrounding it, so it’s not a surprise that many haven’t heard about or been talking about the game.

The hype has seemingly been so low, in fact, that Sony only today announced that the early access beta would be available to all PlayStation Plus subscribers. It’s tough to know what pre-orders look like exactly, but making the early access beta open to all PS Plus subs after it used to be a pre-order perk is not a great look.

A quick check of the PlayStation Store also paints an uninspiring picture. Concord can be found way down the list of best-selling pre-orders in the seventh row of titles, which is populated with mainstays like Madden NFL 25, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, College Football 25, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, and Astrobot above it.

Concord is a five-vs-five hero shooter, featuring 16 playable characters with different abilities and personalities, a living world set to be infused with lore and story beats over time, and a fun, colorful universe. So, there’s no reason why it can’t find success.

Pre-orders aren’t the end-all, though. We could feasibly liken Concord’s situation to another recent PlayStation success like Helldivers 2, which was strong on release but completely blew up in popularity in the weeks and months following thanks to word of mouth and a successful launch. This may be a situation where players need to try the game out themselves for it to have a chance at taking off, especially as a live-service title that hopes to retain players for the long haul.

And the game’s developer, Firewalk Studios, may be its biggest ace in the hole. The studio is made up of many ex-Bungie developers and is based in the same exact city of Bellevue, Washington. So if there’s anything to get hyped for beforehand, it’s that some of the minds behind it worked on games like Halo and Destiny, which both helped to define the FPS genre in different ways. Say what you will about those franchises, but they have always had excellent gunplay.

I think the best chance for Concord to succeed is for the game to blow players away in its beta period, which also includes an open beta that begins on July 18. If the game is fun and can scratch an itch that other hero shooters currently can’t, then it has a chance.

But if the beta fizzles out and doesn’t bring any new eyes to the project, then the situation looks bleak for its Aug. 23 launch. I hope I’m wrong because the game looks like it has some serious potential. The hard part is making the gaming masses care about it.