Welcome back to The PlayStation Report! We’re spending some time running our way through Sony’s list of IP to determine how they’re doing these days. This time, we’re going to be looking at the letter C, and just a heads up, this one’s BLEAK. Which is absolutely infuriating following recent statements from Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki, who said “we don't have that much IP that we fostered from the beginning.” True, a lot of their brands came from acquisitions, but even still, there’s a LOT that Sony can pull from if they wanted to, which is evident by today’s list. So how are the C games doing? Let’s find out in The PlayStation Report! 

Calling All Cars!

Developed by Incognito Entertainment for the PlayStation 3 back in 2007, Calling All Cars! was a pretty neat game. It was actually directed by the semi-controversial God of War creator David Jaffe, and isn’t entirely dissimilar to another Sony property, Twisted Metal. In it, you play as a bounty hunter trying to capture escaped criminals before other bounty hunters do the same via some vehicular combat. Its single player campaign wasn’t exactly its strong suit, but the multiplayer was generally liked. It was a PSN download title only, as far as I know never receiving a physical retail release. 

Health rating: Very Dead

This was a one-and-done game for sure. It performed okay and reviewed well enough, but it definitely didn’t set the world on fire. Incognito Entertainment dissolved in 2009 with most of its staff branching off into other development studios, but even still, I can’t imagine this game ever coming back. Nobody involved seems to have any interest in it at all. 

Codename: TENKA

Good ol’ Psygnosis. Codename: TENKA was a first person shooter released for the original PlayStation and PC. You play as a dude named Tenka who’s out to stop an evil corporation from doing nasty experiments, and said nasty experiments are a big part of what folks liked about the game. Its enemy designs were pretty gnarly. The state of first person shooters back in early 1997, though, was pretty different than it is today, especially on home consoles. Developers hadn’t quite nailed how these things were supposed to work without a keyboard and mouse, and the DualShock controller wouldn’t see release for another several months. Codename TENKA was pretty inventive in some ways, but it had an uphill battle right out of the gate. 

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Health rating: Very Dead

This game released just two months before GoldenEye 007 on Nintendo 64 basically reinvented the FPS genre outside of the PC market. Coupled with the lack of dual analog controls, TENKA just didn’t catch on. It reviewed well, but clearly not well enough for Psygnosis to attempt at a followup as far as I can tell. Psygnosis was fully absorbed into Sony in 1999 and changed to Studio Liverpool, so technically the company who created the brand still exists in a way, but I can’t see TENKA reappearing anytime soon. Especially not with the FPS market as flooded as it is today.   

Cardinal Syn

This stinker of a fighting game was developed by Kronos Digital Entertainment, who you might know from other relatively stinky fighting games Dark Rift and Criticom. Unlike those other games though, Cardinal Syn appears to have been specifically tied to Sony as they were the ones who published it, so I’m going to assume they had some ownership in the brand. This is a fantasy 3D fighting game, and that’s really all you need to know about it. 

Health rating: Very Dead

Kronos Digital Entertainment changed direction from fighting games to action games in 2000 with the surprise hit Fear Effect. They made a sequel, and that was about it for the company. So if Cardinal Syn was still owned by them, it’s toast. If it’s owned by Sony, on the other hand, well, it’s still toast. This game didn’t review particularly well, nor was it a massive sales success. There’s a degree of curiosity about it on the internet these days in relation to it being a weird old 3D fighting game few people have ever heard of, but I would be beyond shocked if Sony decided to dredge this brand up ever again.   

Colony Wars

Boy, Psygnosis sure liked making games that started with the letter C! Okay, it’s just the two, but still. Two on one list! Anyway, Colony Wars is an outer space flight combat series that launched on the PlayStation during the holiday season of 1997. You’re a member of the Colonial Navy and you fly a starfighter around, blowing up the bad guys. It’s actually got a heck of a lot of lore if you want to dive into that sort of thing. The first game has a pretty killer soundtrack, too, composed by Tim Wright of Wipeout fame. Neat! 

Health rating: Basically Dead

Okay, this one only gets a Basically Dead instead of a Very Dead because while it has been over 20 years since there’s been a new entry in the series, it is at least an actual series. There were three Colony Wars games released on the PlayStation, the last of which was Colony Wars: Red Sun in 2000. They all were fairly well reviewed and sold decently. That third game, though, wasn’t actually published by Sony here in North America. Midway handled that one, which coupled with the fact that none of the games were ever released in Japan makes me think Sony doesn't have much reverence for the brand. So yeah, its return is pretty unlikely at this point, but it’s not completely out of the question! 

Concord

Ahh, Concord. Poor, poor Concord. In case you haven’t been paying attention to the news lately, Concord is a big, expensive, live service hero shooter released in 2024 from Firewalk Studios. It was their debut game, took about 8 years to develop, and cost a pretty sizable amount of money. Its intent was to cash in on the hero shooter craze from a few years ago. It, uhh, arrived a bit too late. 

Health rating: Hard to Say

Concord stands as a perfect distillation of everything that’s wrong with the modern video game market. When the game’s trailer debuted, it was almost universally panned. Its beta wound up with a paltry player base, and its release was nothing short of a complete disaster. The characters are uninspired, the genre itself is played out, and it landed with an enormous thud. It was shut down and recalled just two weeks after its release. It would seem that Concord is over, but this was not an inexpensive endeavor for Sony, and I have my doubts they’re just going to let this one lie. It could go away forever, but more than likely it’ll show back up in some form in the not too distant future, where it will most likely not do a whole lot better because at the end of the day, Concord and its characters are just really unappealing. 

Cool Boarders

There was a time when snowboarding games were all the rage. Nintendo 64 had 1080, and Playstation had Cool Boarders. Interestingly enough, it’s hard to say if this brand is actually owned by Sony. They published the majority of the series, but it was developed by UEP Systems, who released an entry on Dreamcast under the name Rippin Riders in the US, but actually retained the Cool Boarders name in Japan, as well as a Cool Boarders game for the Neo Geo Pocket Color. Another dev team, Idle Minds, took a swing at the franchise a couple of times too, which muddies the waters even further. Regardless, Cool Boarders is a pretty beloved franchise, and one of the most ubiquitous titles on the original PlayStation. 

Health rating: Basically dead

The last cool Boarders game was the Japan exclusive PS2 entry Cool Boarders: Code Alien. It seems to have been pretty well-liked, too, but it never got ported anywhere else. Cool Boarders 2 was included in the PlayStation Classic mini console a few years back, though, so it’s definitely not a forgotten brand for Sony. But with it being well over 20 years since the last original entry, it’s hard to say it’s in any kind of good condition. Still, it’s snowboarding, and that's the kind of thing that never truly goes out of style. Perhaps someday we’ll see a proper revitalization? I wouldn’t be terribly surprised, but it still feels pretty unlikely at this point. 

And that wraps up another rather demoralizing PlayStation report. The depths of Sony’s properties that they haven’t done a single thing with in decades is truly staggering. I will continue to hope that with the release of Astro Bot celebrating PlayStation’s rich history while Concord completely tanked, Sony will come to realize that they're sitting on a goldmine of properties that could rival Nintendo’s if they put the time and effort into fostering them. But alas, today is not that day. 

Join us next time for the letter D where there are a lot more games to talk about. Hopefully Sony’s got something living in there to be excited for!