PlayStation’s Concord is a fine shooter, but there’s little confidence it can compete

Sony and Firewalk Studios Agreement Launching later this month on PlayStation 5 and PC, the team-based hero shooter faces an uphill battle for success. The team-based hero shooter, unlike many of its competitors, is a “premium” paid title – meaning it’s not free to play like rival shooters Overwatch2, Apex LegendsAnd Tom Clancy’s XDefiant.

Agreement will also soon have more competition on that front; on PC there is a hero shooter FragPunkan upcoming free-to-play game from NetEase. And then there’s the launch of Riot Games’ Brave (now live on consoles as of Friday) and the upcoming NetEase’s Marvel Rivals (now in closed beta).

The last two free-to-play games have the kind of built-in fanbase that Firewalk would probably love to have. Brave is launching as a mature product, with four years of content and refinement, and fans of Riot’s games know the studio will continue to support their shooter for years to come; League of Legends celebrates its 15th anniversary later this year. About 6 million people play Brave daily, according to Tracker network. And then there is Marvel Rivalsfeaturing more than 20 playable Marvel superheroes and villains spanning decades. Marvel Rivals‘ beta boasts around 40,000 peak players on Steam alone, according to Steam Graphs.

So far, Agreement has not yet built a strong enough identity to compete with those superpowers. Number of players during Agreement‘s beta weekends were worryingly low. The game has been widely dismissed by some of its potential audience as relying heavily on Blizzard’s Overwatch and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy characters. What do to make Agreement What sets it apart from the competition is the price; it’s a $39.99 multiplayer game in a field of free-to-play rivals. It feels like a product of a time that’s now gone; Firewalk started work on its multiplayer game years ago, when Guardians of the Galaxy were still popular and Blizzard was charging money for the original Overwatch.

Firewalk positions the pay-to-play aspect of Agreement as positive. The developer has said it won’t bring a battle pass into the gameand will continue to support the sci-fi shooter with new characters, maps, and modes. That would logically endear it to some players who have grown tired of the battle pass grind, and the ubiquitous monetization tactics of free-to-play games.

But Agreement didn’t seem to draw much of a crowd during its two beta weekends. The game’s first beta testing period was originally intended for players who had pre-ordered the game, but a last-minute change of plans opened it up to anyone with a PlayStation Plus membership. That indicated there was no interest in pre-ordering the game, and a second beta testing weekend — open to all players on PS5 and PC — also didn’t draw much enthusiasm. According to unofficial data from True Trophies, AgreementPlayer numbers dropped by 8% between the first and second beta weekends.

I played the Agreement beta and found it to be a solid shooter, with interesting hero kits, unique team dynamics, and a very slick presentation. But the beta didn’t communicate clearly how to play Agreement; unlike the Marvel Rivals beta, Agreement‘s playtest came without a tutorial mode. Understanding the game’s unique mechanics required delving into a text-based guide and experimenting under the pressure of live team play. Worse still, the first deathmatch-style mode that was in the beta at launch, which Agreement players forced to experience first, failed to emphasize the game’s character buffs system and important team-based dynamics. I had some fun with Agreementbut I’ve largely stuck with it and delved into the game’s systems out of professional obligation. I doubt it will pull me away from my other live-service games of choice.

I hope Agreement finds an audience, and that players who pay $40 for it (and a PlayStation Plus subscription on top of that) will find thousands of other like-minded teammates and enemies. If they don’t, PlayStation Plus subscribers may benefit in the long run, because Agreement seems destined to become a monthly PS Plus giveaway, if initial interest is any indication.

Agreement is undoubtedly partly an experiment for PlayStation Studios, part of a larger plan to crack the lucrative live-service games space with future titles like Marathon, Fair play$and unannounced online projects from Guerrilla Games and London Studios. Time will tell if the PlayStation fanbase willing to shell out cash for games like God of war, Ghost of Tsushimaand the Spider-Man games will do that for an untested multiplayer experience like Agreement.