Serious Questions Must Be Asked About PlayStation CEO Hermen Hulst After New Concord Report

A new report about Concord surfaced today that, if true, raises some serious questions about Herman Hulst, current co-CEO of PlayStation. The report in question — which comes the way of a very reputable source, Colin Moriarty — claims that Concord cost $400 million. This would mean it is the most expensive game ever shipped under PlayStation. It would also mean Sony lost $400 million on the game. And if Firewalk Studios, the developer behind the game, closes as a result, it lost even more as PlayStation purchased the studio in the middle of the game’s development. How much it splashed for the studio, we don’t know, but it is safe to assume it was in the dozens of millions, if not a couple hundred million.

What’s surprising is not that the game flopped, but how much PlayStation believed in the game. The report mentions that Sony viewed Concord as the “future of PlayStation” and a product on the level of Star Wars. PlayStation was under the impression it was going to be able to mine Concord for many future games and adaptations, and all it got out of it was a game that shut down and got removed from sale in two weeks. The contrast in expectation vs reality is incredible. In fact, it’s bizarre. 

The moment Concord was revealed, many quite rightly signaled the flop alarms. How come the average PS5 gamer could see Concord was a flop waiting to happen but PlayStation top brass thought they were cooking up this generation’s biggest new IP? Where is the disconnect and why is it laughably massive? Well, unfortunately for Sony, if the new report is true, the disconnect is the strongest with the guy they recently promoted to PlayStation co-CEO. 

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Back in May, a couple months before the Concord incident, Sony promoted Hermen Hulst from head of PlayStation Studios to co-CEO of PlayStation. During his time as head of PlayStation Studios, Hulst didn’t just oversee the development of Concord, but was no doubt a key component in the studio’s acquisition. This is, of course, assuming the new report is true because the new report claims Hulst, among others in leadership positions, “championed” Concord. More than this though, the game was described as “being his baby.” 

The implications of this are obvious. It took one trailer for your average Joe Shmoe gamer to know the fate of Concord. Meanwhile, Hulst was at the helm of its development thinking it was about to be “the future of PlayStation.” The level of disconnect is tremendous. This isn’t just a catastrophically expensive mistake from Hulst, it is an embarrassing one that raises serious questions about whether he is fit for the role he had, let alone the role has has been promoted to. Hulst and co. get paid untold millions to make the exact calls that just cost Sony half-a-billion dollars when they could have gotten a better counsel from the YouTube comments section. Suffice to say, Hulst and any other PlayStation leadership involved in this disaster have serious questions to answer.