Sony and Firewalk Studios’ Concord launches on PlayStation 5 and PC later this month, and faces an uphill battle to success. The team-based hero shooter is, unlike much of its competition, a “premium” paid title — meaning it’s not free to play like rival shooters Overwatch 2, Apex Legends, and Tom Clancy’s XDefiant.

Concord will also soon have more competition on that front; on PC, there’s hero shooter FragPunk, an upcoming free-to-play game from NetEase. Then there’s the launch of Riot Games’ Valorant (now live on consoles as of Friday) and the upcoming NetEase’s Marvel Rivals (now in a closed beta test).

The latter two free-to-play games have the kind of built-in fan bases that Firewalk would probably love to have. Valorant will launch as a mature product, with four years’ worth of content and refinement, and fans of Riot’s games know that the studio will continue to support their shooter for years to come; League of Legends will celebrate its 15th birthday later this year. About 6 million people play Valorant daily, according to Tracker Network. And then there’s........

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