Sony Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki doesn’t think that the media giant has enough franchises that it has “fostered from the beginning,” calling it an issue for the company as it seeks to rival its competitors in the space.
“Whether it’s for games, films or anime, we don’t have that much IP that we fostered from the beginning,” Totoki said in an interview with the Financial Times. “We’re lacking the early phase (of IP) and that’s an issue for us.”
PlayStation fans quickly seized on Totoki’s comments, posting images of Sly Cooper, Resistance, and other long lost franchises. But as others pointed out, Totoki was referring to the business as a whole, which is lacking in homegrown properties on the scale of, say, Mario. Outside of Spider-Man, Sony’s biggest transmedia sucess is arguably The Last of Us, which debuted to great fanfare on HBO in 2023.
One fan opined on Reddit, “This comment is referring to Sony as a whole, not just its games division. From that perspective, I think I would agree. As a casual viewer I couldn’t name anything that stands out to me from their film division that isn’t an existing IP, and even what they are making doesn’t have the greatest reputation. What is Sony Pictures without Spider-Man? Hotel Transylvania?”
Sony has prioritized the acquisition of major franchises, at one point seeking to team with Apollo to acquire Paramount for $26 billion in a deal that ultimately fell through. Still, Sony is hoping that it can continue to develop popular properties of its own.
Whether it’s for games, films or anime, we don’t have that much IP that we fostered from the beginning
“We have the technology and creation is the area where we like and where we can contribute the most,” CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said as part of interview. “By putting our efforts in creation, that also means that we will work with partners on the distribution side. So I think we have developed very good relationships with the so-called Big Tech players.”
The interview also quotes Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini, who says the streamer is seeking to team with Sony to co-produce shows amid rising production costs. He estimates that there are around 800 million anime fans globally, which he believes could rise to a billion in the next few years.
“Given the constraints within the ecosystem, there is opportunity for various companies, including Sony, to see if there is a way to add additional capacity, bring additional talent and potentially leverage digital technology in the creation process,” Purini said.
Sony is just one of many media companies to join the frenzy to find valuable franchises for streaming services, video games, and other platforms. Nintendo, Sega, Warner Bros., and Disney are among the companies to dig into their portfolios to find fodder for movies and amusement parks, resulting in a host of revivals, some of them quite obscure.
Elsewhere, Sony’s attempts to create its own online franchise hasn’t gotten well, with Concord set to be pulled offline less than two weeks after launch. Prior to the cancellation, Concord was set to appear in Amazon’s Secret Level series, though it’s unclear whether those plans will move forward.
In the meantime, Sony fans are being left to fondly reminisce about Infamous, Jak and Daxter, Dark Cloud, Gravity Rush, and other lost classics. Hey, at least there’s always Astro Bot, right? Sony’s nostalgic platformer will be out September 6.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
Sony Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki doesn’t think that the media giant has enough franchises that it has “fostered from the beginning,” calling it an issue for the company as it seeks to rival its competitors in the space.
“Whether it’s for games, films or anime, we don’t have that much IP that we fostered from the beginning,” Totoki said in an interview with the Financial Times. “We’re lacking the early phase (of IP) and that’s an issue for us.”
PlayStation fans quickly seized on Totoki’s comments, posting images of Sly Cooper, Resistance, and other long lost franchises. But as others pointed out, Totoki was referring to the business as a whole, which is lacking in homegrown properties on the scale of, say, Mario. Outside of Spider-Man, Sony’s biggest transmedia sucess is arguably The Last of Us, which debuted to great fanfare on HBO in 2023.
One fan opined on Reddit, “This comment is referring to Sony as a whole, not just its games division. From that perspective, I think I would agree. As a casual viewer I couldn’t name anything that stands out to me from their film division that isn’t an existing IP, and even what they are making doesn’t have the greatest reputation. What is Sony Pictures without Spider-Man? Hotel Transylvania?”
Sony has prioritized the acquisition of major franchises, at one point seeking to team with Apollo to acquire Paramount for $26 billion in a deal that ultimately fell through. Still, Sony is hoping that it can continue to develop popular properties of its own.
Whether it’s for games, films or anime, we don’t have that much IP that we fostered from the beginning
“We have the technology and creation is the area where we like and where we can contribute the most,” CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said as part of interview. “By putting our efforts in creation, that also means that we will work with partners on the distribution side. So I think we have developed very good relationships with the so-called Big Tech players.”
The interview also quotes Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini, who says the streamer is seeking to team with Sony to co-produce shows amid rising production costs. He estimates that there are around 800 million anime fans globally, which he believes could rise to a billion in the next few years.
“Given the constraints within the ecosystem, there is opportunity for various companies, including Sony, to see if there is a way to add additional capacity, bring additional talent and potentially leverage digital technology in the creation process,” Purini said.
Sony is just one of many media companies to join the frenzy to find valuable franchises for streaming services, video games, and other platforms. Nintendo, Sega, Warner Bros., and Disney are among the companies to dig into their portfolios to find fodder for movies and amusement parks, resulting in a host of revivals, some of them quite obscure.
Elsewhere, Sony’s attempts to create its own online franchise hasn’t gotten well, with Concord set to be pulled offline less than two weeks after launch. Prior to the cancellation, Concord was set to appear in Amazon’s Secret Level series, though it’s unclear whether those plans will move forward.
In the meantime, Sony fans are being left to fondly reminisce about Infamous, Jak and Daxter, Dark Cloud, Gravity Rush, and other lost classics. Hey, at least there’s always Astro Bot, right? Sony’s nostalgic platformer will be out September 6.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
Mass Effect is one of the most acclaimed and beloved video game franchises of all time, with global sales of over 20 million copies across the series. Now, fans of Commander Shepherd and the Normandy Crew have the chance to see their favorite characters sculpted on the tabletop, thanks to the upcoming Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz.
You might justifiably be concerned that this is a cheap cash-in, like many board game adaptations of video games, but the good news is that one of tabletop’s hottest designers, Eric Lang, creator of Blood Rage and XCOM: The Board Game, is attached to the project. The better news is that he’s a fan of the Mass Effect franchise himself. “I’ve been humbled by the game’s profound and groundbreaking influence on all video game design for over a decade,” he admits. “I wanted to do justice to this brand.”
However, the magic ingredient for the project was Eric’ trusted co-pilot, new designer Calvin Wong Tze Loon 黃子倫, whom Eric describes as a “superfan” of the sci-fi series. Calvin was understandably thrilled to have the opportunity. “When I got the invite to co-design and do narrative work, I screamed out loud,” he admits. “In some ways, I haven’t stopped screaming since!”
Priority: Hagalaz is set aboard the titular planet of Hagalaz, on which a rogue cruiser from the terrorist cell Cerberus has crashed. The game tells the story of Commander Shepherd and crew infiltrating the ship to discover its secrets in the hope of gaining an edge in the ongoing war effort against the terrifying Reapers. While the planet of Hagalaz was featured in both Mass Effect 2 and 3, it’s not central to the plot and seemed an odd choice to set the action of the board game.
Turns out this choice was Calvin’s. “It’s the Shadow Broker planet from Mass Effect 2, and a planetwide storm provided a very dramatic time limit with which we could pressure the players,” he explains. “From a personal perspective, I always liked filling in the corners of stories I liked. We saw the storm, briefly, in the video game. What if we came back?”
Although the designers steered the game, they did so in coordination with the Mass Effect team at Bioware to ensure that the game stayed true to their original vision for the setting and characters. “We wanted to make sure that the objectives and narrative text both fit canon and the heroic tone of the series,” says Calvin. “For example, Bioware asked us to include extra text saying that various prisoners and civilians rescued by the squad would be picked up by Kodiak shuttles so that it was clear they were being rescued.” Eric adds that it was also Bioware’s idea to have two different hazard decks to differentiate areas of the cruiser.
Mechanically, the game is a cooperative affair in which players pick characters from the franchise and work together in tactical combat missions, defeating enemies and securing on-board objectives. The introduction, events and outcome of each mission are woven together with snippets of narrative text. This is a crowded genre, potentially including critical behemoths like Gloomhaven, but Priority: Hagalaz has two innovative features, aside from its popular license, that make it stand out from the crowd.
Firstly, it’s a campaign game that you can play in a single evening, with your team undertaking 3-5 hour-long missions – it’s your choice how many, and it’s easy to “save” your game state between sessions – across a branching structure of 10 different scenarios which can lead to different endings.
When I got the invite to co-design and do narrative work, I screamed out loud.
“We wanted the most epic experience that was also approachable by the vast majority of players crossing over from the video game series,” says Eric. Calvin picks up the theme, saying “As board gamers, we know the pain of completing one mission of a campaign, packing it away and knowing it could be months before you saw the same friends again to do the next mission. So we wanted to give players that feeling of getting a ton of bang for their buck. See everything! Play it over and over!”
Second, the game has a clever action dice system in which the first player each turn rolls a large pool of dice, picks the results they want to use, then passes the remainder to the next player who can lock in a single result and re-rolls the rest. Action dice, where the rolled faces indicate what actions you can undertake, are an underused concept in design, although they made a recent appearance in Dune: War for Arrakis. They allow a designer to achieve a fantastic balance between strategy and excitement, while ensuring a game doesn’t grow stale once you’ve mastered the strategy. Passing the dice pool between players is a novel way of using them, making player order and timing absolutely critical to your tactics.
This is one of Eric’s contributions to the design. “I borrowed that mechanic from an unfinished cooperative skirmish game I was working on, and was waiting for the right fit,” he tells IGN. “I love how it models the chaos of squad combat without requiring the stress of real time.” Interestingly, dice are not used to determine combat results: if you roll a combat action face and decide to use it, you hit automatically and do damage depending on your character. “You’re a squad of competent pros, so this allowed us to avoid the frustration of ‘roll to hit – miss!’,” explains Calvin. “The option to save a die increases co-operation between players, as I’m looking at my friend’s situation and asking them if they’d like me to leave them a specific die so they can bail themselves out of it, which enhances the feeling of being an elite squad.”
While the dice pool does enhance cooperation between the players, games where everyone is working together can suffer if one player tries, intentionally or otherwise, to take over decision-making. Eric has designed a number of other cooperative titles, and doesn’t feel it’s an issue in Priority: Hagalaz. “In my opinion, this is an overstated problem,” he says. “There are various ways to mitigate it, one of which is dynamic complexity, allowing tension between players’ advancement goals, introducing light competitive elements. Our game has this in spades.” He’s talking about the way characters develop between missions, rewarding each player’s achievements with their choice of new powers to use in the next game.
Whatever innovations the game brings to the tactical combat genre, it is perhaps more important that it plays and feels like a Mass Effect game, something the designers were keenly aware of. “We designed the squad members from the ground up to replicate the fantasy of those characters from the video game,” Calvin tells IGN. But for many players, the designers included, what makes the series stand out from its peers is the sense that your in-game choices have a profound effect on the unfolding story, ensuring your own journey has a sense of uniqueness that reflects your decisions. Designing that into a board game, with its relatively limited set of narrative and components, is a huge challenge, but Eric and Calvin felt it was important to meet it head-on.
I love how it models the chaos of squad combat without requiring the stress of real time.
Their tool of choice was the way missions can end in three states, a difficult “Paragon” victory, an easier “Renegade” win, or a loss, each of which feeds into the next mission. If you aim for the highest grade, you might end up failing completely. “Do you risk the more difficult idealistic path for wilder upgrades, or take the safer, more pragmatic path for more steady upgrades,” queries Eric. “Another way is that the missions you choose impact future missions directly. It’s the most elegant implementation of a branching narrative that we liked.”
Eric notes that this is something players can, and do, decide on the fly. “We noticed play testers sometimes abandoning the Paragon objective when things got too hot, therefore making a narrative choice via a tactical decision,” he recalls. “That’s such a cool moment, because even though you don’t actually fail the campaign if you lose the mission, players just organically decided the risk was too high and took the safe win instead of sticking it out for an idealistic, but perhaps doomed outcome. And maybe they can try again in a future play through!”
With only 10 missions total, even with a branching structure and a variety of characters to choose from, it feels like the game might have limited replay value. But the designers think that not only is that not the case, it’s actually part of the way it conjures the Mass Effect sense of meaningful decisions. “Being able to replay a short campaign also lets players see the various outcomes of their choices as they try it again and again,” Calvin points out. “Each playthrough encourages players to try different builds for their favorite squadmates and see how those skills play off each other. Players could choose to funnel all the squad’s power into one character, or spread it out amongst others. Agonizing over who gets which level up and how to assign the skills so that synergies are created amongst the squad is a really cool set of choices.”
This kind of design is meat and potatoes to Eric. “I specialize in modular replayability, which is fancy designer-speak for games that present fun scenarios that change significantly depending on which components you choose to bring to the table,” he explains. “Two campaigns played side-by-side where you choose only one different mission and one different squadmate should have a very different feeling with the same rules set. I’m not a fan of disposable content; we wanted to design scenarios with a number of fun ways to approach and solve, while forcing players to adapt. Picture something like 10 intertwined games of Pandemic with different endings to work towards.”
It’s clear that Priority: Hagalaz is something of a labor of love, where both designers have worked hard together to try and identify what made the series special for them, and bring that across to the very different realm of tabletop play. The result doesn’t just pop on the tabletop thanks to the video game assets and plastic figures, but fills a small gap in the narrative of the original trilogy’s final game, Mass Effect 3. How the board game fares as part of the wider franchise is yet to be seen – Eric would only say there are “plenty of ideas in the works” – but in true Mass Effect style, your decision on whether to play it might impact its future in an as-yet unforeseen way.
Scalpers are currently trying to sell physical copies of Concord for much more than its recommended retail price after Sony pulled the hero shooter from sale just 11 days after launch.
Scalpers who still have a sealed copy of the game are therefore seeing it as an opportunity to make some money, listing Concord on eBay for double or even triple its price. Some sellers still have it available for its standard price of $39.99 so it’s unlikely many of these will sell just yet, however.
“Ships overnight on September 4, get on September 5 so you can play for a day before the servers shut down,” reads one listing for an opened copy priced at $119.88. “On September 6 the game will be a rare unplayable collector’s item.”
A sealed copy is currently listed for $179.99, though at least warns players of the September 6 takedown and says “buy at your own discretion.” Its next comment is a tad more questionable: “Get ready for an epic gaming experience with Concord for the Sony PlayStation 5,” it says. “This rare and highly sought after game is being recalled and is available now in a USA sealed package.”
There is no denying this edition of Concord will be rare, but whether or not it becomes valuable remains to be seen. It’s likely only a few thousand are out in the wild though, given how poorly Concord sold and how low physical sales are compared to digital.
Concord has an unclear future in more ways than one, and while developer Firewalk has said it’s going back to the drawing board and suggested a free-to-play re-launch may be on the cards, Sony has made no such guarantee.
Mortal Kombat 1 developer NetherRealm has released a gameplay trailer for upcoming DLC character Sektor, showing off her Fatality and Animality.
Sektor arrives as part of the Khaos Reigns expansion for Mortal Kombat 1, the latest game in the gory fighting game franchise that’s sold over four million copies. The expansion adds new story mode chapters available from September 24, along with Kombat Pack 2, which itself includes six new DLC characters: Cyrax, Sektor, and Noob Saibot (available on September 24), and guest fighters Ghostface (Scream franchise), T-1000 (Terminator 2: Judgement Day), and Conan the Barbarian (post-launch release timing to be announced at a later date).
It’s Sektor who is the focus for this new gameplay video, though. It shows off the character’s abilities and moveset (flamethrower, missile strikes, and rocket thrusters for enhanced movement and hovering ability), and clips of cutscenes that shine a light on the story fans can expect.
Here’s the set-up, courtesy of publisher Warner Bros. Games:
In Fire God Liu Kang’s New Era, Sektor grew up immersed in Lin Kuei culture – her father was its master armorer, and her mother was a leading warrior. This vast knowledge of weaponry and formidable martial skills passed down from her parents make Sektor a kombatant like no other. Sensing a kindred spirit, Sub-Zero shared with her his grand vision for the Lin Kuei’s future and chose her to become his most trusted lieutenant. Now Sektor will force the Lin Kuei to evolve and those who cannot change will be eliminated.
The highlight of the video, though, is a look at one of Sektor’s Fatalities. Here, Sektor channels Marvel’s Iron Man, complete with cool sci-fi in-suit headshot, as she drags her hapless opponent into orbit before heading back, their body burning up on re-entry.
NetherRealm, of course, is no stranger to the superhero genre via its Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe crossover fighting game franchise. We haven’t seen a new game in that series for some time — perhaps it’s time for a return, with James Gunn’s new DCU set to kick off soon.
Meanwhile, the video also teases Sektor’s Animality, the finishing move that lets her to morph into a rhinoceros. Animalities are part of a free update for all Mortal Kombat 1 owners set to go live alongside Khaos Reigns on September 24.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
No Man’s Sky’s next big update finally adds fishing to the game after a piece of fan art stopped developer Hello Games in its tracks.
Following the release of No Man’s Sky’s Worlds Part 1 update and its new water technology, Hello Games has today, September 4, released the Aquarius update, which finally adds fishing to the long-running space sim.
This fishing feature was inspired by a piece of fan art, below, that shows the player’s avatar fishing while sitting on their spaceship. It was published by redditor catador_de_potos with the thread title: “I’m a simple man with a simple dream.”
“Something folks really loved in the Worlds update was the new water technology, tons of players were posting videos of themselves just chilling at the water’s edge,” Hello Games boss Sean Murray said.
“One piece of fan art in particular stopped us in our tracks, of a player lazily fishing from their wing of their boat. That inspired our next update Aquarius – where we finally add fishing to No Man’s Sky!”
The Aquarius update adds “a huge array of fish, from common minnows to wild alien catches, each with their own habitat and catching conditions” to No Man’s Sky, Murray said.
You can bait your line to lure in the rarest of fish or trawl the deep for hidden messages in a bottle. There are trophies to earn, fishing logs to complete, and new fishing equipment rewards. There’s even a unique fishing expedition, Murray teased, which sends players on a quest for “the biggest catch of the day.”
New equipment lets you fish in deep water from your personal fishing platform. New Fishing Pots can be used to bait and trap rare catches. You can cook up the catch of the day with new recipe combinations to be discovered.
“My favorite thing is to build a little base on the perfect shoreline, so I can cast my rod whenever the mood takes me,” Murray added.
No Man’s Sky launched in 2016 initially for PC and PlayStation 4 before coming out on Xbox One in 2018, and PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S in 2020. A Nintendo Switch version followed in 2022. Over the years, Hello Games has issued a long list of major updates, most recently the aforementioned Worlds Part 1. Murray said Worlds resulted in No Man’s Sky’s biggest player numbers in over five years.
Indeed, it’s a busy time for Hello Games, which alongside updates for No Man’s Sky is working on its next game, Light No Fire. It’s about adventure, building, survival and exploration together, set on a fantasy planet the size of Earth.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Bandai Namco has confirmed the Dragon Ball MOBA, codenamed Dragon Ball Project: Multi, fully launches in 2025.
A beta for the game wrapped yesterday, September 3, 2024, and Bandai Namco thanked fans for playing on its X/Twitter account while quietly announcing the full release window.
“We sincerely thank everyone for taking part in the regional beta test,” the post said. “All the valuable input we have received from our players will help our development team strive to make the game even more entertaining.
“New information about the game will continue to be available on this account, so please follow us until release. The game is planned for official release in 2025.”
Set to release on PC via Steam alongside mobile platforms the App Store and Google Play, Dragon Ball Project: Multi also promises vast customization options including different skins, entrances, finisher animations, and more.
“Experience the world of Dragon Ball through wrecking the battlefield with your own strength, or by conquesting the enemy objective with your friends and allies,” the synopsis reads. “The hero characters you take in control will grow in strength as the round progresses to give you a chance to obliterate enemy players and bosses alike.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Assassin’s Creed players who’ve lamented the removal of double assassinations in recent entries will be pleased to hear the Japan-set Assassin’s Creed Shadows is bringing the nasty technique back.
A Ubisoft blog post confirmed stealthy assassin Naoe, who is one of two playable protagonists in Assassin’s Creed Shadows joined by the savage samurai Yasuke, can use the much-loved double assassination to take down two enemies at once.
“Depending on her weapons, she can assassinate enemies in unique ways, and perform double assassinations with her Hidden Blade and tanto,” the post said.
Double assassinations were once a mainstay of Assassin’s Creed but haven’t appeared in the franchise since 2015’s Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, meaning it’s skipped four mainline entries. This lines up with the series’ switch to larger role-playing games in Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, but not even smaller, more traditional entry Assassin’s Creed Mirage had it.
Some fans have long tried to justify why this is the case, and as spotted by GamesRadar, one said it’s because the technique was created by original assassin Altaïr Ibn-LaʼAhad and therefore only exists in the games set after his.
This lines up, as the last four games have all been set before the original Assassin’s Creed, but other fans have pointed out the assassins are master killers able to land on a target from 100 foot above or do a front flip while stabbing someone in the neck, so the concept of killing two people at once shouldn’t be beyond them.
IGN had a wealth of exclusive content on Assassin’s Creed Shadows upon its reveal in May 2024, and you can read about all the gameplay changes, story beats, and open-world assassinating coming with Shadows in our extensive interview with the development team.
Update 9-4-24: Until Dawn remake developer Ballistic Moon has acknowledged “significant” layoffs at the studio after several staff members announced their departure earlier in September.
A LinkedIn post from the studio said it was “profoundly sorry” for the layoffs that appeared to affect at least 11 members of staff at the studio, though an exact number is unclear and Ballistic Moon did not respond to IGN’s request for comment.
“It is with deep regret and a heavy heart that we must make the tough decision to significantly sale down our team to secure the future of our studio,” Ballistic Moon said. “This comes after our development of Until Dawn for PS5 and PC.”
It continued: “Saying goodbye to such a talented and passionate group of people is incredibly difficult, and we are profoundly sorry for the impact this restructuring will have on our employees and our families.”
Original Story 9-2-2024: Ballistic Moon, the developer behind the PlayStation 5 and PC remake of Until Dawn, has laid off several staff members.
Eurogamer first reported that at least two staff members had announced their departure on LinkedIn but 11 Ballistic Moon developers have now either posted about being made redundant or marked themselves as “open to work” and looking to start somewhere new immediately.
It’s unclear exactly how many of these staff were laid off, or if the number is greater than 11, but IGN has asked Ballistic Moon for comment.
“Like many others in this wonderful but turbulent industry, I am sadly being made redundant from my role,” said junior game designer Cassy Cornish in a LinkedIn post. “Unfortunately my current role at Ballistic Moon is being made redundant so I’m looking for new opportunities,” said game programmer Stuart Campbell in another
The past two years have seen countless video game industry layoffs as big companies including Microsoft, Sony, and the embattled Embracer Group have not just cut jobs but shut down entire studios.
Sony’s shock announcement of Concord’s shutdown just two weeks after it went on sale has sent its remaining players into overdrive as they desperately try to secure its Platinum trophy before it’s too late.
PlayStation Studios’ ill-fated first-person hero shooter, which suffered a drastically low player count upon launch, goes dark on September 6, with all players set to receive a refund. Ryan Ellis, director at Sony-owned developer Firewalk, said: “while many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended.”
Soon after that announcement, reports indicated that Concord players were throwing Rivalry matches in a bid to earn experience points as fast as possible. Rivalry mode sees two teams of five players battle for dominance across best-of-seven single-life rounds. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Now, players are starting a match and immediately running off a platform to their doom, resulting in a win for the opposing team and the end of the round.
Rivalry matches are the perfect choice for this tactic. Win or lose, it rewards players with more experience points than other game modes. And because it’s the best-of-seven single-life rounds, as long as the whole team gets in on the act and each round takes about 30 seconds, you can finish a match in just a few minutes — again, as long as all players follow suit and you lose or win four matches in a row.
Thus, this is the quickest way to earn experience points in Concord, and thus the quickest way to earn that Platinum trophy (you need to get to reputation level 100, which takes hundreds of thousands of XP), with just two days left before the game shuts down. But be warned: your win percentage will take a hit if you keep deliberately losing. Still, that might not be much of a concern given Concord’s impending doom.
This is literally every match of Rivalry in Concord rn because this is the fastest way to earn XP for the Platinum 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/BZ12OV7lc1
IGN has verified that Rivalry matches are currently being played out in this fashion. The race, it seems, is very much on.
Some Concord players are saying there’s not enough time to grind to the Platinum trophy, so it might escape them. Others are holding out hope that Concord returns in free-to-play form, although there’s no guarantee it will return at all. As a result, the Concord Platinum trophy may go down as one of the rarest in PlayStation history.
What’s clear is that Concord itself is one of the biggest flops in PlayStation history, a game one of its developers said was in the works for an incredible eight years. There is now concern for the fate of its developer, Firewalk, and Sony faces tough questions about its upcoming live service games, including Bungie’s Marathon and Haven’s Fairgame$, neither of which have a release date.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
