It makes zero sense trying to save it here and now, but that's how C-Suite idiots think, so I won't be surprised. The show launches in just over 90 days, chances are pretty good that episode is already in the can and it's far too late to steer resources into another franchise for a different episode to fill the spot. Ad sales against that content have already closed big contracts, marketing has already laid campaigns that mention Concord all over the place, and for the content industry 3 months is too late to try to steer the ship away from a disaster.
Animation (outside of South Park) often takes 7-10 months on the low end to get a single episode from start to finish. Like I said, they're doing a New World episode and that shit is dead as doornails. I doubt they'll allow an launched/un-launched game off the hook. Hell, it's probably now their plan to convert the game to F2P in time to simu-relaunch with the animated series episode so that they can get Amazon promotion synergies.
All the more reason for Amazon to not give a fuck and release the episode anyway. They already expended the effort and money, they've probably already sold the ads to run against it, they've got streaming hour benchmarks to hit if they want to claim the show is a success, so everything is running in favor of Amazon taking a look at the shitshow the game is in and saying, "SHIP IT" for their Secret Level episode. Normies who aren't super into gaming aren't going to know that the game it represents is dead, and there's a fair chance that Sony will pursue F2P explicitly so that it can not be when the episode airs so they can attempt to get some money from those people who will see the episode and want to play the game. The people behind "Love Death + Robots" are behind this series, they're probably going to ship a good Concord episode that will make that bland mess of Live Service nonsense seem interesting whether or not the game is good or even alive.
The fact that the announcement says they're taking the servers offline and looking at options to connect with "their players", while Sony have also not just shut down Firewalk Studios (A wholly owned subsidiary of Sony) is more or less a full endorsement of the idea that they think they can make a go of this by going F2P. Studios that flat out fail don't stick around in this day and age and the director of the game is saying that they're looking at options to connect with "their players", how is that not saying that they're going to remove the one barrier to entry that everyone is talking about by taking the game free to play?
I think you may have misunderstood, I didn't mean to suggest that Concord was a headline IP, I was saying that Amazon considers Secret Level to be a headline IP for Prime Video and they've got zero fucks to give about what good (or bad) business the game their episode is based on is doing, they need butts in seats to watch their prestige video games anthology series from the makers of "Love Death + Robots" and I don't think they give a single shit if Sony feels bad because their game didn't make it and Amazon still launched an episode set in the same universe as the game.
Not if ad sales has already written contracts for ads against a set number of episodes. Not if you have streamed hour targets that you need to hit for the show if you want to keep making future seasons of the thing. Not if you are not a gamer and don't give any fucks about the stupid decisions that Sony made with the IP they probably paid you to make an episode about. There's absolutely zero reason for Amazon to shitcan an episode of this show just because the game it's based on was nonsense and everyone knew it years before the game ever launched, it's an extra 30-40 minutes of space to stick ads and pump "hours watched" even if the episode is as bland as the game. Ads and hours are the only things that video platforms care about, they're going to keep that episode unless there's a contractual obligation to cancel it. I doubt that Sony had the foresight to put something in their contract that allowed them to shut things down if the game flopped, and even if they did, such a provision would usually mean that they'd have to pay Amazon some penalty to exercise that option which probably makes it cheaper for Sony to just allow it to move ahead.
I would not take that bet. I also think the brand is dead. It's got a year or two tops of being a shambling zombie, but you're thinking too much like a rational person and businesses don't think like that, they're going to try to squeeze blood from this stone, it's the only thing they know how to do.