I think that the core issue with Concord was just that it doesn't do enough to stand out from its competitors like Overwatch, Valorant, R6 Siege, or Apex Legends. I can briefly comment on the purported eight year dev cycle - no game really has a real dev cycle that long, that's longer than an entire console generation. Most games with long dev times spend the last 2-3 years in actual development and the first block spinning their wheels or restarting from scratch. The main issue also wasn't the diversity of its cast - every hero shooter has a diverse cast of characters.

The core issue I see is just that they don't do any one thing super differently. Without a major defining element to stand out from the rest of the pack - a gameplay mechanic, a license, a visual style - there isn't anything to draw an audience for your game. This is usually the result of choices made by the upper team leadership. Perhaps the director's vision just wasn't what players are interested in today. Perhaps the game was designed by committee. Perhaps there were other major issues that cropped up during development. Perhaps some core team members left during development and they were unable to recover. Regardless of what it is, the game itself is perfectly serviceable in all of the ways I saw, and that just isn't enough to grab an audience. Being ok at everything doesn't grab attention.

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