Its not happening because to be brutally honest, Sony has become more of a US company.

Concord was developed by Firewalk Studios which is a US company (operating in Washington) and Sony Interactive Entertainment (responsible for Playstation) moved their headquarters to the US (California) a while ago. The current CEO is also an American (previously Jim Ryan, now Hermen Hulst will be takingh over management of the studios while Hideaki Nishino will be CEO of the platform business).

I donnt know if its guaranteed but yeah, if it was Japanese then I think the head would quit. Sakaguchi quit Square after the movie Spirits Within was a financial flop (shame since although it was a flop, it had a huge influence in CGI and gaming). Tabata quit Square Enix as well after Final Fantasy 15 flopped hard. Its not guaranteed but you do see leadership quit after a very huge financial failure of a project but these are resignations so its not like the company forced them to quit (ofcourse we cant be sure and there likely could be internal pressure).

But we arnt going to see heads roll for the failure of games like Dustborn or Concord On the contrary, we have seen the Dustborn devs pull out the Hollywood playbook of attacking the audience as -ists because they didnt buy their crappy game.

I hope that they saved some landfill space next to E.T. Because that is where all the PS5 physical copies are headed.

The prudes simply can't have it. "Omg, is that an exposed piece of skin?!? Filthy filthy filthy!"
If they had their way, we'd be back to full body bathing suits and showing ankle would be scandalous.
"But obJEctFYing fictiONal cHARacteRS is bad!" (+1)

I'm not 100% that they are prudish... but maybe. IMO they just seem to like making characters generally unappealing.

All I can say is... "My face is tired."

Lol. I read the title and thought the same.

Turns out when you make a character based game, in an oversaturated, burned out genre, and give it some of the least appealing character designs of all time, no one shows up. Who knew.

LOL! I just went onto Evilbay to check PS5 disc prices, just for a laugh. People are listing the game as "rare" for $200 already! I mean analysts estimate the game only sold 25K copies in its short life span...most of those would be digital...so maybe the PS5 discs really will be collector's items. A collectible without much use...but that applies to most collectibles really. Most people will probably return them for refunds at GameStop.

There's also a limit edition Concord PS5 controller.

Notice how it's nearly always just the female characters that get beaten with the ugly stick. Look no further than Star Wars Outlaws. Main protagonist guy in the Jedi Survivor games - nearly 1:1 likeness. Main protagonist in Outlaws? The actress should honestly sue them for what they did to her. It's always the chin/jaw where you can instantly tell "yep, made by a western dev".

Yeah, this game doesn't look very promising either. But as a single player game it is not that dependent on gathering a huge crowd. A lot of people may buy it on sale just to never actually play it...

Its iffy to be honest and not everyone quits. For other industries, there is a big apology by the heads of the company but no one quits so its a relatively old practice to be honest. While I do think Sakaguchi leaving was quite unfair and Square honestly hasnt been the same without him, Spirits Within was a huge stinker and financial failure that hurt Square significantly and delayed their merger with Enix. To be honest, Sakaguchi himself was also incredibly demoralized following the failure of the film and basically spent 3 years at home and only got back on the horse thanks to Toriyama (Dragonball) and Inoue (Slam Dunk/Vagabond). In many ways, Sakaguchi leaving was his own decision rather than a forceful decision by Square.

Not only is this not really a policy in the west, I dont think the devs for Concord or Dustborn think they did anything wrong. Havent heard from Concord but Red Threat Games argues that Dustborn's story is "deeply meaningful" and assume that the criticism is just a tidal wave of hate and abuse.
https://x.com/Quantic_Dream/status/1829508467092283704

The phrase "sex sells" exists for a reason, and it's not wrong. Try using butt-ugly people in a television commercial for your product (beer, aftershave, whatever) and see where it gets you ...

Several thousand years of evolved human nature isn't going to suddenly change, just because a loud vocal minority group of social activists wants it so bad.

The thing that really boggles my mind though, is not why a vocal minority of activists are trying to push something that doesn't make sense. I expect that. It's why so many corporate publishing executives seem to be listening to them.

I guess their misinformation and scare tactics proved somewhat effective. There is still that false concept out there in a lot of heads that people want to be represented in media and the more different groups are represented in a piece the more people will end up buying it.

Then we know from Sweet Baby Inc and the like that they are actively threatening developers to hire them or else. Fortunately Black Myth Wukong proved that the vast majority of gamers doesn't care about made-up sexism scandals as long as the game delivers.

Hopefully the industry takes note that those activists have next to no power.

I don't quite understand how you can even sell an online shooter for $40 and expect it to become popular, as the world is already full of free-to-play online shooters like Fortnite, Counterstrike 2, Overwatch 2, Team Fortress 2 (still alive and kicking, especially as they now finally got rid of the cheater bot flood, been bot free for a couple of months now; human cheaters are still there though).

But I guess I am wrong and some non-free online shooters are widely popular, like what is the latest Call of Duty or whatever.

Me, I am still playing Team Fortress 2, without spending a dime to the game. I tried Fortnite, Overwatch 2 and Counterstrike 2 but just couldn't get interested enough to continue, for some reason.

From what I've read, they are planning to re-release it as "free-to-play".
That's also why they give refunds to early buyers.