See my previous post then for your better example.
Last edited:
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Marathon releases to 87,000 players on Steam and 87% Positive Reviews (sponsored by coachmcguirk91)
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Hard to say. FH5 was a fully priced game I think.
It's too early to call Marathon a flop or a success. 80-90K is in a territory where it depends on whether or not it retains the player base. Veilguard peaked at 90K and was a flop when you'd think that number is respectable. We put too much stock in Steam CCUs in my opinion. The medium to long term is more important than an immediate peak for Marathon.
Last edited:
People were celebrating its lower CCU on steam, let me put it that way.
Even 88k before the weekend is a good number so I think somebody saying "good launch" isn't controversial and I'm not sure why some are suggesting it isn't.
Retention is a different thing but it has a good review score on steam so it might have staying power. We'll have to wait and see for that one.
Last edited:
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Would they have celebrated if it had released at $40?
Eh, don't think 88K is good. Might be alright, maybe bad even. Nioh 3 peaked at 88K and released at $70 and likely had a much smaller budget than Marathon.
88K at best is okay. If it peaks higher tomorrow and manages to retain its players, then it'll probably do decently.
coachmcguirk91
Member
Veilguard only peaked at 80k because Dragon Age is/was one of the biggest IP's in gaming. As soon as people played the game, the CCU deteriorated quite quickly
Marathon had a beta last weekend and has very positive initial reviews today(87%). At a minimum, Bungie has the player base to evolve the game over the next 6 months
Last edited:
playbignbox
Member
What exactly about it is garbage? From what I've seen, it feels more like a hate bandwagon than people pointing to something objectively bad about the game.
Signalis
Member
What the fuck did I just watch
Don't see why not. There were celebrations of people playing it for $1 on gamepass even. With regards to sales again celebrations of 66k at $40 on steam for SoT.
Nioh 3 peaked at 70k on a Friday launch I think. Marathon did 88k on a Thursday launch. You would have to wait for the weekend as you said for a true peak. Expectations and budget I don't know about but 88K isn't a bad CCU on its own. I mean look at threads like this.
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Well, the reviews at least are good, so potentially a higher CCU this weekend. If it clears 100K, it should do pretty well. There's also the PlayStation factor. If it does substantially better there than on PC, which isn't impossible, then I think the launch will be a moderate success.
Last edited:
Guardian Monkey
Member
gameplay, depth, and unique style which works
Hari Seldon
Gold Member
Yeah the CCU would be great if this was a 20 person polish studio. This game is a disaster in context.
yurinka
Member
Unlike Concord or Highguard, Marathon is a great in most/all areas, a very good, very fun and addictive game.
KimDongHwan
Member
it almost feel this game is right there in the middle of it being considered a complete failure or a success, what do we do about it Gaf?
peish
Member
Yes but like what's the specifics? Say you are bungie, sell us on marathon, us who for some reasons were discriminating against concord highguard
yurinka
Member
No, considering most successful GaaS games normally make more money with addons than with game sales, this game pretty likely will need to sell around 4-5M units in all platforms combined, something that will achieve pretty likely the first or second month.
Maybe won't be a superhit, but make sure will be a profitable and successful game
As small recap
- Stellar core gameplay: Bungie's gunplay
- Highly engaging and addictive core loop: you always have some cool reward very close, and keep progressing even if you die
- Tons of cool reward of many types, dropped frequently and spread in many different progression/unlock trees, which you can customize and tailor to your preferences, or easily move to another if you get stuck in one
- Top tier world building: great, interesting and misterious sci-fy cyberpunk story with a huge amount of lore you unlock and read in small bits between missions, greatly integrating a proper narrative in a PvP game. Also has great, unique and atmospherical artstyle, visuals, weapon design, level design, etc. that when everything gets combined makes a great and unique world and identity
- Great learling and progression curves. Maybe the learning could be improved in the first steps better explaining a few things so you don't need to discover it for yourself, like what buttons clicks and presses do or in which contidions is better this or that character. A training camp to test and compare weapons would help. There's a gazillion things to learn and masters, there's depth here for months and they'll add more periodically
Last edited:
Forza Horizon 5 has the highest ever peak concurrent players number of any racing game ever released on Steam.
How well does the 88k of Marathon fare when compared against similar GAAS shooters?
Or even compared against Arc Raiders in its own subgenre? or against Destiny 2, made by the same developer?
That's how to use data.
Represent.
Represent(ative) of bad opinions
LMAO Flopathon is hilarious
It could reach 100K by the weekend. But things are not looking good
phant0m
Member
For starters, people that play it seem to actually like it.
Beyond that, Marathon seemingly didn't piss off the anti-woke crowd that much. Everything about Concord character design was the gold standard of everything thy despise about modern game dev
Regardless, in both cases I was surprised at the outcome. Concord was a finished game, I was stunned that Sony didn't even give it 6 mos to try and establish an audience (I can't imagine server costs for 6 mos are even a drop in the bucket compared to the already sunk dev cost). I expected Highguard to say "we hear you and are going to overhaul some things", disappear for a year and come back with something better, maybe do more limited access testing like Deadlock
Anyway, persistent negativity is doing some major damage to this industry. Next time you want to complain that nobody makes anything new and it's all safe sequels, remember every single comment and thread reveling in the failure of these games. I'm not saying you have to like everything, but sometimes it is ok to just shut the fuck up and not persistently comment about things that aren't for you.
Last edited:
coachmcguirk91
Member
People conflate Marathon being profitable to Sony purchasing Bungie for 3.6mil and needing to justify that
It definitely needs more than 5 mil sales to break even. Bungie hopes this is a 10 year GAAS game. It will have a strong player base, just by initial reception. I am not sure it will ever be a mega hit, though. Even still, you don't need crazy high Steam numbers to make absurd money in GAAS games
PlayStaytion
Member
I like 3d blocks.
Need for speed: Heat has a higher CCU peak, F1 2015 has a higher CCU peak.
"That's how you use data".
OuterLimits
Member
yurinka
Member
The gamedev and marketing for launch and seson 1 plus its servers costs may have costed around $250M. Successful GaaS often make more revenue selling addons than the game. Let's say it does a bit more but got compensated with store costs, refunds etc so Sony gets on average (in the mid/long term) $80 per copy.
$250/$80=3.1M copies. Being conservative, let's say 4M copies. It may be profitable in a month or two. The next seasons get self funded.
The $2.4B of the acuqisition, plus up to $1.2B in bonuses which part of them weren't paid because some were retention bonuses and some of them got fired or left, plus others should be performance bonuses and Marathon got delayed plus Destiny 2 didn't perform after acquisition as well as they originally estimated.
Obviously nobody expected to recoup that with Marathon. They expect recoup it with part of the profits of Destiny 2, Destiny Rising, Marathon, future Destiny, Marathon and new IP games, future Destiny, Marathon and new IP off-gaming adaptations, plus games and potential adaptations of the Team LFG stuff, the non-Bungie GaaS they did help improve, top people they moved to other SIE/PS Studios teams, sales added to the console, money added to PS+ to play the online and so on.
And nobody expected to recoup it in a couple years, this never happens and is nonsensical. Multibillion investments take several years to recoup.
Last edited:
Haint
Member
Bungie has a guaranteed built-in player base, and spoiler alert, so does Horizon, Guerilla, and the Hunting genre.
Alandring
Member
Completely agree. And in my opinion, the most important data about this is the review score, currently at 87% of positive reviews.
If you ask me, Marathon won't be an amazing success like Helldivers 2 or Arc Raiders, but it also won't be a flop like Concord or Highguard. It seems that it will be a moderate success, which will probably be profitable.
Need for speed: Heat has a higher CCU peak, F1 2015 has a higher CCU peak.
"That's how you use data".
Lmao. My point is made for me.
F1 2015 hit that peak when the game was given out for free
NFS hit that peak during a 95% off fire sale years after release.
And even with that (free/95% off) those were in the same ballpark as the CCU achieved by FH5 at launch, sold at $60 - $70.
Now that's how to use data!
Before:
Lmao. My point is made for me.
F1 2015 hit that peak when the game was given out for free
NFS hit that peak during a 95% off fire sale years after release.
And even with that (free/95% off) those were in the same ballpark as the CCU achieved by FH5 at launch, sold at $60 - $70.
Now that's how to use data!
After:
You do know Destiny 2 is f2p right?
Last edited:
LyricalShrike
Member
Could you share the games around it for context? I'm unfamiliar with what top charts on consoles look like.
Before:
After:
You do know Destiny 2 is f2p right?
Grasping at straws now?
Marathon just launched. Of course we're comparing launch CCUs. There's a reason nobody's talking about the server slam numbers.
I stand corrected about Destiny 2. Now let's focus on the preceding sentence where we benchmark against other paid GaaS shooters.
Negotiator101
Member
Very bad design decisions by Bungie are why it's failing, everything else is irrelevant.
Von Hugh
Member
Pretty much this. They just made the wrong game.
Aressa
You can't die before your death
86k for an AAA is a good success?
DForce
NaughtyDog Defense Force
Resident Evil 9 is 1st
WWE 2K26 is 6th. The game is in early access.
MLB The Show launches on the 17th, and it's ahead of Marathon.
KanKamAndNob
Member
Apex Legends and Battlefield 6 at least in the US.
MaxwellParrish
Member
Which only means that launched on Steam only after having taken its sweet time to address the pathetic lack of content that made it a disappointment at its original launch.....