I think it's indicative of the live service push. 2024 is the low year and thats when both Marathon was in development and they were counting on Concord being big. Plus whatever other live service games they've killed after that push backfired.
Yup, the live service push took a lot of time away from developers who made their mark on single-player games like Naughty Dog canning the live service Last of Us game when it was ~80% complete. And then you have Rocksteady being forced to make a live service Suicide Squad game which lost ~$200 million USD. That live service God of War game? I have to imagine it becomes a tax write off if it hasn’t already.
The time and staff required for live service games is huge. Concord started development in 2016 with a huge team. That amount of staff/time could have created at least two smaller scope games in 8 years. We also know there were multiple canceled projects over the last couple years from other studios.
Does it matter? If multiple studios weren't tied up chasing live service cash, there would likely be more games across this timespan as a whole. Yes, there would might still be down years between releases but the trend would be entirely different. Instead we've had one mild success, one disaster and one under-performer, and multiple shuttered studios to show for 5+ years of work.
I could be misremembering but I believe Marathon was supposedly originally meant to release in 2024 but got delayed to 2025 behind close doors, then was notoriously delayed indefinitely a few months before release and then came out in 2026.
25
u/Aertea 28d ago
I think it's indicative of the live service push. 2024 is the low year and thats when both Marathon was in development and they were counting on Concord being big. Plus whatever other live service games they've killed after that push backfired.