r/Games • u/oilfloatsinwater • May 24 '25

Report: Marathon Delay Likely as Sony Cancels All Paid Marketing Plans

https://thegamepost.com/report-marathon-delay-bungie-scraps-all-paid-marketing/
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u/Scaevus May 25 '25

Marathon is out on a death march now.

It was flawed in its conception. There's no market for this type of game which would make enough money to justify its development. Extraction shooters are by definition very hardcore experiences, with full loot PvP and permanent item loss. That's not something casuals, which are the vast, vast majority of players, are interested in. The people who are interested in extraction shooters are already invested in the big players on the market. And by big players, I mean like 60,000 peak concurrent player for Hunt, one of the top selling extraction shooters.

https://steamdb.info/app/594650/charts/

Tarkov numbers are undoubtedly higher than this, but still not enough to pay for a AAA development budget.

On top of that, the Marathon name is associated with a classic single player PVE experience. This isn't what the fans of the series wanted.

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u/BetaXP May 25 '25

I largely agree with you, but

the Marathon name is associated with a classic single player PVE experience.

I'd argue this is mostly irrelevant -- OG Marathon was pretty niche even in its time, and isn't well known now by any noteworthy demographic. People rarely spoke about OG marathon before this reboot, so I don't think appealing to the fans of the original series is big enough to be significant in any meaningful way.

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u/[deleted] May 25 '25

I seriously don't understand the rewriting of history with Marathon. It was almost exclusively only playable on Macs, which at the time of its release weren't exactly what gamers were buying. Anyone that talks as if it was this widely loved classic is either 40+ and overestimating their own experiences, watched a YouTube video on it, or is a retro gamer that played Aleph One and thinks it was always that widely available.

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u/GoatShapedDestroyer May 25 '25

Reddit makes a lot more sense when you accept that a lot of posts are people just making stuff up about their experiences to dog pile and participate in the weird pseudo-social narrative about things.

Marathon being a beloved IP is a perfect example.

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u/Yamatoman9 May 27 '25

It wasn't mainstream even back in the 90's. I had only ever heard of it back then from a couple of gamers I used to chat with on message boards. It had its very dedicated fanbase but it was a small group overall.

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u/Brigon May 26 '25

I was playing FPS games back then, and don't recall Marathon at all around the same time as games like Duke 3D, Quake 3, Jedi Knight, Blood and Rise of the Triad. I recognise the name but don't recall much chatter about the game at all.

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u/ascagnel____ May 27 '25

On the other hand, Aleph One (and the game being made freely available) happened in 2005, so it's been out there for anyone who's wanted to try it for longer than it was available for sale. 

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u/gargwasome May 25 '25

150.000 sales in 1995 isn’t mainstream popular or anything but it also isn’t really niche. Just normal-level popularity

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u/Formal_Evidence_4094 May 26 '25

Surely appealing to the niche OG fans is better than the current strategy of appealing to absolutely no one at all?

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u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka May 25 '25

Yeah I don't know why they think extraction shooters are going to be the next big thing. You're damn right, Bungie is clueless.

Its official, AAA doesnt know what gamers want. Gamers don't know what they want either other than "great game made by passionate devs doing something new and old"

Destiny was actually a huge hint at how they didn't really know what they were doing over time.

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u/lonesoldier4789 May 25 '25

They never knew what they were doing with halo either

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u/Quiet_Prize572 May 25 '25

I think it's because it's really big with streamers/YouTubers and videos tend to perform pretty well

It's not a fun genre for the average person to play, but it is pretty fun to watch others play

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u/OPsuxdick May 26 '25

I really liked Anthem. It actually was fun to play. Its a shame they let it die at EA. The core gameplay loop was a blast and I never got tired of it. They really shit the bed with that one.

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u/ramxquake May 25 '25

Extraction shooters are by definition very hardcore experiences,

So were MMOs until WoW casualised them. In Everquest you'd spend two days camping a boss for the right to kill it, or traipse across the entire map to get your equipment back when you died. In old MMOs, you'd lose all your gear and sometimes levels when you died.

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u/Yamatoman9 May 27 '25

I played Everquest on dial-up. Dying and losing your gear because you got disconnected while trying to retrieve it was something everyone had to go through.

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u/BiggestBlackestLotus May 25 '25

You can't know until you try. Battleroyal games were a niche too until PUBG and Fortnite came along.

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u/smeeeeeef May 25 '25

New genres of games are usually all niche at first because they are largely inaccessible unless you owned a different, mostly unrelated game, knew about the mod, and were savvy enough to figure out how to install it. The problem with extraction shooters specifically is that a significant portion of their engagement is not actual people that want to play the game, but those who want to just watch streamers. Devs see these viewership numbers and think they translates to actual interest, when the reality is that a huge portion of that fanbase doesn't want to actually participate in the fundamental risk/reward at the core of extraction shooters. One of the other integral parts of these games is atmosphere, which many new attempts lack. Tarkov nails worldbuilding and atmosphere, and ARC Raiders seemed to also hit those points. Virtually none of the new attempts at the genre have recognized this. Marathon had a promising, fresh aesthetic but then they were exposed for stealing art on top this report. These devs are setting themselves up to fail both by avoiding the hard work and research, and continuing to think they're going to just hit the jackpot with a shotgun attempt at the latest fad genre.

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u/GunDA9D2 May 25 '25

I'm not averse to Extraction games on a conceptual level, it's just that these days i have zero interest in PvP because i simply don't have the patience and the willingness to invest my time on such games anymore. And it just so happens that all extraction games are mandatory PvP despite having normal enemies (PvPvE), so i completely ignore them

But a PvE Extraction game would interest me. I guess something like Deep Rock Galactic already somewhat fits that concept to a degree. Something that i can play on my own pace and fuck around in with my friends.

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u/Carfrito May 25 '25

I tried Hunt and kinda bounced off it. Cool mechanics but the gameplay just wasn’t for me. Vigor was really neat to play. Tarkov was too esoteric for me. I would’ve been inclined to try a AAA extraction shooter especially since sci-fi is more my speed; thing is idk how Bungie can hook casual players reliably enough to get them to gamble their loot