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Concord failed in 2024 whereas Marvel Rivals succeeded beyond expectations. What is the reason behind this variation?
Timing played its trick of having Concord and Marvel Rivals stand face-to-face with each other. While the new Marvel hero-shooter is still on the hype train even more than a month after its full release, Concord died before it even had a chance to get a proper playerbase. What’s the reason you ask? Well, there can be plenty of factors. However, today we will try to explore the major ones.
NOTE: The article contains the writer’s opinions and does not aim at criticizing any game or its business models.
Major Reasons Behind Marvel Rivals Success Over Concord
As we already mentioned, there is not just one reason behind the discrepancy we see among gamers when it comes to these two games. However, we have narrowed it down to the following potential reasons that may explain why Marvel Rivals succeeded or why Concord failed unexpectedly:
- Community Sentiment
- Character Roster
- Character Design
- Marketing
1) Community Sentiment
If you are active in online gaming communities or just any virtual space on social media, you will find out that gamers are not too happy with the “live service” model of games. Regardless of whether a game is a PvE or a PvP, people have started disliking live service game models. However, there is a nuance to note here. Not all live service models are hated. For example, Fortnite is still going strong, and so is Marvel Rivals.
The pattern suggests that games that are fully priced and still adopt the live service model tend to fail. We saw this with Suicide Squad and then Concord. Since the latter was in development for many years, they failed to change their model based on recent player expectations and suffered an outrage on the internet.
So, partly the reason behind why Concord’s failed was the fact that Sony sold it at full price in the market while Marvel Rivals is a free-to-play game. Although Concord would have given post-launch characters and other updates for free, the anger towards the live service model sunk its ship. The next reason on the list is why people made an exception for Rivals.
2) Character Roster
One thing that saved Marvel Rivals despite being a hero shooter with a live service model was the roster that it brought with it. This game showed the world that there is no such thing as “superhero fatigue” because the fans of the game simply jumped on this game the moment it was fully released on December 6, 2024.
When it comes to the Marvel roster, Concord couldn’t compete. Although, Rivals didn’t pick only the popular characters; many of them were already pretty popular to some comic book fans. So, the roster made both casual and dedicated fans happy. It goes without saying but each character has its own back story and the game’s lore adds something new to the mix because of the Timestream Entanglement.
Concord, on the other hand, did not have characters that people knew beforehand. Moreover, all the backstories about these characters would have been introduced gradually in the game.
3) Character Design
Despite having a roster full of Marvel characters, whether mainstream or less popular, NetEase Games didn’t rely on the original character models too much while developing the game. They took inspiration from certain designs and improvised to give them a little personalized touch. Even the costumes that are supposed to be “comic accurate” have something new to them because the character designs are different than what you would find in the comics.
With Concord, things were very different. When the game was up for display on social media because of the marketing team, people had already started criticizing the character design. Sure. There were those who defended the character models, but it is understood that people did not find their original designs as catchy as they did with Marvel Rivals.
4) Marketing
Concord had been in development for eight long years. All this time, the game had no particular hype surrounding it because its marketing team did not do much to promote it. While we don’t have a timelapse for how long Marvel Rivals was in development, we all know about the hype that surrounded the game before its release. The reason was the fact that the team behind the game didn’t fail to promote it even when the game was in close beta testing.
As for Concord, people who were not following the game closely only heard about it a few weeks before the planned release. As a result, many did not even know about it until it became a controversial failure. Marvel Rivals didn’t have to see that day thanks to its marketing. Moreover, the people who played NetEase’s hero shooter self-promoted it and it eventually worked in their favor.
Looking For More?
Thank you for reading the article. We provide the latest news and create guides for Marvel Rivals. Also, watch Deltia play on Twitch or visit his YouTube channel!
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