New PlayStation FPS Concord was in development for about 8 years - starting almost exactly when 2016's Overwatch got hero shooters trending

PlayStation's new hero shooter rival Concord has apparently been in development for around eight years, which would trace production back to 2016, the year Overwatch first released.

After a round of beta playtests, Concord officially comes out on PC and PS5 tomorrow (there's a slightly more expensive edition that gives you early access to the shooter now) and developer Firewalk's lead character designer Jon Weisnewski jumped onto social media to celebrate the launch.

"Today Firewalk Studios launched Concord," the developer tweeted. "The game has been in development for around 8 years and I've been there for almost 5 of them. We don't get a lot of Launch Days in our careers so today is special for a ton of reasons. Oblige me some good vibes today."

Blizzard obviously kickstarted the short lived hero shooter craze with 2016's Overwatch, which was followed up by Gearbox's Battleborn, Hi-Rez's Paladins, and other games that were never quite able to recapture that same lightning in a bottle. That makes 2024 somewhat of an anomaly since both Marvel Rivals and Concord - to say nothing of Valve's mysterious Deadlock - are aiming for a piece of the hero shooter pie, in an era where it seemed developers had largely given up on the trend because, well, it's not trending anymore.

Marvel Rivals is another free-to-play shooter, this time starring some of the most iconic comic book characters around and very Overwatchy movesets, which is of course attracting tons of attention ahead of its December 8 launch. Concord is instead gunning in a different direction, as the studio recently announced that it wouldn't include battle passes because "you own concord, Concord doesn't own you."

Get the competitive edge with our best Concord characters guide.

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