MindsEye has already been thrown in the Walmart bargain bin and hocked on eBay, but its launch is still better than Concord (for now)

MindsEye, the first release from ex-GTA lead Leslie Benzie’s Build A Rocket Boy, is essentially dead on arrival. After years of development, the new studio’s cinematic action game has proven to be a technical and commercial disaster. 

Just a day after launch, PlayStation already started issuing refunds for the new game. Now, just a few days after launch, the game has already hit the bargain bin with retailers already shoving the game down to just $20. 

MindsEye already hits the bargain bin 

Build A Rocket Boy’s debut game release launched at an recommended retail price of $60, what we would’ve deemed a full-priced release before the rise of $80 games.

As videos of the game have been shared online, showing faces diving in on themselves, terrible NPC AI, the game’s protagonist walking on water and countless other bugs, the new game has failed to catch on. MindsEye is a technical disaster the likes of which we haven’t seen in years, and the game underneath it sadly seems very average as well. 

In response to the terrible sales and high number of refunds, retailers are already shoving the game into the bargain bin. One gamer already spotted the brand new release in the clearance section of their local Walmart, charging just $20 for the game.

While Walmart has pushed the game into its clearance section, gamers are doing the same thing. Just days after launch, the game has been thrown on eBay by dozens of players attempting to get their money back. Can anyone blame them? 

Gamers have compared the game’s launch to that of Concord, PlayStation’s first-party multiplayer game that launched to such low player numbers that the game was pulled from sale just weeks after launch. However, while gamers didn’t vibe with Concord, that game was still a functional video game. It just didn’t grab anyone. 

While we can’t possibly deem how popular the game is across all platforms, MindsEye has hit an all-time peak of 3,302 concurrent players on Steam. For comparison, Concord’s peak was just 697 players. While it may be a flop in terms of sales, it’s technically not the worst launch we’ve ever seen. 

But why has MindsEye failed so spectacularly? Well, maybe it’s scale. While the current title may be a single, linear cinematic adventure, it’s set in an open world that’s expected to be fully explorable in the future. Really, it’s a new type of live service or early access, attempting to get players to buy a truly unfinished version of the full experience. And that bid hasn’t paid out.  

But is it worse than Concord? Gameplay wise, yes. Launch wise, not yet. MindsEye, bizarrely, still has players. Not only are gamers obsessed with just how broken the new game is, but there’s something about the game that is clicking with gamers. (It’s got guns and cars, after all.) As long as the game doesn’t get removed from sale, it’ll be a much better launch, hilariously. 

Hopefully, MindsEye will get a second shot of life with a large number of post-launch updates. Build A Rocket Boy announced substantial post-launch plans for the game with extra content, but right now the focus is on fixing the game. How much can the game be fixed? Only time will tell.