StreetsofBeige
Member
Yup. The heavier weighting this game has with us gamers they better the numbers will be later tonight.
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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)
ChorizoPicozo
Member
Last Hearth
Member
Even if the single player campaign was just ok. With the Bungie name and a decent marketing push they would have cleared 5 million without much difficulty.
Come On Tars
Member
Word of mouth seems good? Starting to root for this. Idk if I'm personally into it but I was not ready for Bungie to shut down.
xBlueStonex
Member
Currently sitting at 27th on steam charts during launch week. Well behind Arc Raiders, and getting absolutely bodied by STS2:
ChorizoPicozo
Member
And it's beautiful
//DEVIL//
Member
Thats not really fair way to see it . Kids at school people are work on the East side. West side they just woke up.Official 24 hour mark: 54,013
This time yesterday was 81,152. That's a 27,139 CCU drop in 24 hours on the dot.
By 10 pm EST we should have a better numbers if it's gonna go up or not.
I don't have hopes for this game but I was wrong before so who knows.
Mortisfacio
Member
Why is 10am PST yesterday (thursday) vs 10am today (friday) not a fair comparison? Both weekdays. Both same time of the day. It's about as fair a comparison as you can make.
Plague Doctor
Member
Found this on the Steam Forums for Highguard and this is too perfect. We have all heard this so many times, it hits too close to home. Total copypasta for the future.
Copilum Lifecycle
Stage 1: The Logistics Excuse
"The game isn't dying; it's doing well! The numbers only look low because of timezones. People have jobs, they have school, they have lives! Just wait until the weekend, the servers will be packed."
Stage 2: The "Quality over Quantity" Pivot
"A game doesn't need millions of players to be successful. A dedicated core player base of 800 people is more than enough to keep the lights on for years. I'd rather play with a small group of 'real fans' than a toxic mass audience anyway."
Stage 3: The Platform Denial
"You're only looking at the Steam charts! Most people are playing on Epic Games Store, or they're on Console. Steam is just a tiny fraction of the total player count."
Stage 4: The "Early Days" Defense
"It just launched! Give the devs time to cook. All the 'missing features' and bugs will be fixed in the first big patch, and then everyone who left will come crawling back. You're just being impatient."
Stage 5: The "Hater" Narrative
"The game is actually amazing; it's just being review-bombed by a loud minority of haters and YouTubers who want it to fail for clicks. If you actually played it for 50 hours, you'd see the vision."
Stage 6: The Final Ghost Town
"I still find matches in under 5 minutes (if I queue at peak time in the busiest region), so the game is clearly alive and well. Stop looking at the charts and just play!"
Copilum Lifecycle
Stage 1: The Logistics Excuse
"The game isn't dying; it's doing well! The numbers only look low because of timezones. People have jobs, they have school, they have lives! Just wait until the weekend, the servers will be packed."
Stage 2: The "Quality over Quantity" Pivot
"A game doesn't need millions of players to be successful. A dedicated core player base of 800 people is more than enough to keep the lights on for years. I'd rather play with a small group of 'real fans' than a toxic mass audience anyway."
Stage 3: The Platform Denial
"You're only looking at the Steam charts! Most people are playing on Epic Games Store, or they're on Console. Steam is just a tiny fraction of the total player count."
Stage 4: The "Early Days" Defense
"It just launched! Give the devs time to cook. All the 'missing features' and bugs will be fixed in the first big patch, and then everyone who left will come crawling back. You're just being impatient."
Stage 5: The "Hater" Narrative
"The game is actually amazing; it's just being review-bombed by a loud minority of haters and YouTubers who want it to fail for clicks. If you actually played it for 50 hours, you'd see the vision."
Stage 6: The Final Ghost Town
"I still find matches in under 5 minutes (if I queue at peak time in the busiest region), so the game is clearly alive and well. Stop looking at the charts and just play!"
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Vyse
Gold Member
Swear to god that is me after this work week. Sorry to derail the discussion.
StreetsofBeige
Member
Yes. But that assumes marathon is a USA heavy game where 8-11 pm EST is peak gaming time.
Some games aren't.
Pubg is big in China so peak gaming is about 8 am est due to 13 hr time difference.
Arc raiders has a skew too as it's peak isn't after dinner est time zone either.
ShadyAcshuns
Member
Live service fatigue happening in real time. Gotta love it.
StreetsofBeige
Member
Just imagine how many other budget busting gaas shooters in the works. More will come and die.
CS2, cod and fortnite. Forever posterboys of billionaire coffers.
Instant_Classic
Junior Member
You're overestimated how much pull Bungie has in gamers minds.
Their game would have to be exceptional to sell 5 million, in today's landscape.
There's a lot of competition.
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Kokoloko85
Member
He's not trying to highlight anything.
-They didnt pay for one game. They should be making games in the future
-Destiny 2 has made money including in 2024 summer they topped the charts over Roblox and GTA5 on PSN
- And was the top Steam charts in 2024
-This isnt all of the Bungie Team. They are working on Destiny 3 and will be other game
-This game didnt cost 3.6billion
Highlighting them spending 3.6 on a Studio that has already given revenue back in a 7 year game, is like highlighting how well COD is doing compared to the 80+billion they spend on Activision. Or whatever they spent on Bethesda.
Destiny 3, Marathon and there next IP's will make Sony money. As long as they dont die and Im sure alot of people here would love that
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Instant_Classic
Junior Member
This, I recall a statistic that mentioned only 2% of the people who worked on Halo are still even at Bungie.
ToneyJ
Member
A year late port of Stellar Blade more than doubled marathon's peak. At a higher selling price and 1/5th Marathon's budget. A new IP from a Korean studio unknown to most gamers vs BUNGIE.
Yeah I don't think marathon is going too well.
Shuhei knew how to pick em. Hulst and Jim, not so much.
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Kacho
Gold Member
Instant_Classic
Junior Member
PC gamers just wanted to stare at her big ass, not actually play the game.
A year late port of Stellar Blade more than doubled marathon's peak. At a higher selling price and 1/5th Marathon's budget. A new IP from a Korean studio unknown to most gamers vs BUNGIE.
Yeah I don't think marathon is going too well.
Shuhei knew how to pick em. Hulst and Jim, not so much.
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Physiognomonics
Member
I smell shenanigans
ToneyJ
Member
Money well spent if you ask me.
GooseMan69
Member
Oof, not looking great. I predicted it would be a moderate success but even that forecast is looking optimistic. If it continues to drop like this we might start verging into DOA territory. Wow.
I am inclined to agree - is the sentiment truly this positive? does not seem to match impressions.
though to be fair - most people who actually buy this are probably true believers already
StreetsofBeige
Member
It's actually $3.6M.
But the total revenue will be all copies sold minus all Steam and Xbox cuts. Same goes for additional mtx.
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Your math is way off.
Also CCU is just who is online at the exact same time. They will have sold some multiplier of that. Maybe it is 10x though so your bad math might actually work lol
GooseMan69
Member
Lol this is so true. If I look in a thread and see people saying "wait for weekend numbers" that's how I know it's a bomba. I'd love to see an example of a game launching to modest numbers and then randomly exploding once the weekend arrives. It's total copium. RE9 was pulling 350K on steam when it was the dead of night in the US and the work day in Europe and Asia.
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It isn't even fatigue, it's common sense, there's a finite number of hours in a day and you can't flood the market with the same GAAS trash asking you to invest time in it, so from all them, just a few will survive, it's always been like that
If I didn't stop playing GTAO, I wouldn't be able to play my huge ass backlog of games, imagine it's the same for anyone, you just focus on one game and stick with it till you got enough and move on, no one is going play with a chronometer in hand, Arc Riders ninety minutes, then stop to hop on idk, Marvel Rivals for one hour and then decide the last two hours will be dedicated to Marathon, that's a work schedule, not an fun gaming session
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Mortisfacio
Member
That's been my consensus on gamers as a whole. Even in the OT, before it launched on PC, half the comments were about how hot Eve was and nothing about the gameplay.
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we will see it's not looking good but the cope is on
splattered
Member
How many promotional keys did they give away though? Lots of contests giving away standard and deluxe keys on Twitter for prob a couple weeks up to launch
Fake
Member
Still money lmao.
IAmAnAgnostic
Member
Bizarrely, even the (terrible) Marathon tutorial that I played during the open beta made it seem like it was PVE.
Like they have you sneak past NPC drone enemies, there is some basic story, you kill NPCs for loot and don't mention anything about a squad etc. Absolutely insane not to have a story and PVE mode primarily, they made Destiny so they would know most people played it for the PVE.
And that terrible tutorial was the most fun I had with the open beta.
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and I don't see many Destiny players going over to Marathon it's a very different gameplay Loop
LectureMaster
Or is it just one of Adam's balls in my throat?
Entry-level slave working 8 hours non-stop: Playing Marathon.
Rich ass leadership Kacho only does meetings all day: Playing Spire 2.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Do we think Marathon has reached its peak or will the weekend break the 88k mark?
ChorizoPicozo
Member
Woow, this marketing is s
Last Hearth
Member
GAAS is fundamentally a different business model than traditional gaming. I'm shocked that gaming executives still haven't figured it out. The "that game is popular, let's make one just like it" works in SP gaming because single player gaming is like offering people a stay at your resort for a week. Your resort doesn't have to be better than other resorts, it just has to be comparable in quality and amenities and you'll get a share of the vacationing market.It isn't even fatigue, it's common sense, there's a finite number of hours in a day and you can't flood the market with the same GAAS trash asking you to invest time in it, so from all them, just a few will survive, it's always been like that
If I didn't stop playing GTAO, I wouldn't be able to play my huge ass backlog of games, imagine it's the same for anyone, you just focus on one game and stick with it till you got enough and move on, no one is going play with a chronometer in hand, Arc Riders ninety minutes, then stop to hop on idk, Marvel Rivals for one hour and then decide the las two hours will be dedicated to Marathon, that's a work schedule, not an fun gaming session
GAAS is offering people a new place to live. Moving is a hassle, you have to offer something that is much better than where they are currently at for them to go through the hassle of moving.
falconhoof
Member
I think the visuals alone are a barrier to this game getting a bigger audience. They're so polarizing and loud. I showed the game to a friend who's put an insane number of hours in to Hunt.
It took him about 20 seconds to declare the game was not for him. In that time he clearly could not have judged the gameplay, he just saw the visuals.
I can appreciate a side to the style, it's bold and certainly stands out, but at the same time the qualities it is based around are meant to be jarring and unusual, and the cost of that is to not be for everyone, and these numbers are looking like its finding out what "not for everyone" looks like.
It took him about 20 seconds to declare the game was not for him. In that time he clearly could not have judged the gameplay, he just saw the visuals.
I can appreciate a side to the style, it's bold and certainly stands out, but at the same time the qualities it is based around are meant to be jarring and unusual, and the cost of that is to not be for everyone, and these numbers are looking like its finding out what "not for everyone" looks like.
MatrixReloaded101
Member
No way they spent 4 billion on Marathon?
I thought the same thing, they literally could a make just decent single player game and ended up with profit by the end of the month. This live service push is so toxic......
Like sony really canned Last of us factions and went ahead with this, crazy.
Bojanglez
The Amiga Brotherhood
My son saw me playing the server-slam and said the game looked like something that could be made in Roblox. I think that was a little harsh, but I don't think he was talking about the aesthetics, he was probably just thinking that is was an FPS with mildly wacky colours and not the hyper-realistic look many games I play have (compared to the games he plays).
I'm still torn as to whether to buy it, I enjoyed the server-slam, but nobody else I know is playing it and my time to play a game that can't be paused is limited. I had the same scenario with BF6, I loved the beta but knew I would have limited time to play online, I justified buying it because at least it had a campaign.
Conflict NZ
Member
The usual suspects are already starting their screeching about Steam CCU numbers and how they shouldn't be visible and it's harming the game lmfao
Yep, I played a good 5 hours and I just couldn't get past it. The entire time it felt like playing a bugged out game where the textures had been replaced by the stand ins that are visually obvious so you can fix them.
Yep, I played a good 5 hours and I just couldn't get past it. The entire time it felt like playing a bugged out game where the textures had been replaced by the stand ins that are visually obvious so you can fix them.
falconhoof
Member
The game it reminds me of at a quick glance is Cruelty Squad, which wears its outlandish visuals with pride in a similar fashion, though clearly Cruelty Squad is even more out there.
PeteBull
Member
Looks like it wont break it durning today's euro peak, so it all depends on the US, will know for sure in about 5-6h then.
WhamBamThankYouMaam
Member
European prime time right now.
yurinka
Member
Several AAA games published already took 10 years or more to be made, the ones released in this gen took most of them around 5-9 years.
The $700M budgets may continue to be a super rare exceptions as they are now.
But every generation budgets almost doubled. Which means that if in the current one it has been common to see $200-$300M budgets, pretty likely will be common to see $350-$560M budgets next gen.
As competition in console+PC GaaS gets tougher, at some point the top ones will keep increasing and increasing their marketing budgets, as already has been happening in mobile for some years.
Here you have an example of a mobile game that spent over $1B in marketing. You'll see a Ferreira guy, he worked with my studio when I started to make mobile games over 20 years ago. Many team members of the game are former coworkers of mine too, from when we started to make GaaS back in 2008 or so. As an example, one of the main producers is a close friend of mine:
https://wnhub.io/news/marketing/item-47420
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dbloom...-billion-in-two-years-but-journey-wasnt-easy/
I have many former coworkers / friends in key positions of places like Supercell, King or CoD Mobile to name a few. They also had crazy marketing budgets.
Games like Marathon require like 3x the amount of people who worked in Mass Effect 3 plus longer development times because have way more content, features and complexity, as an example in this case adding the MP GaaS layer on top (involves very complicated things like economy, retention features, long term progression and discovery, large scale server specific issues, etc), and because the art (models, textures, animation, lighting, shadows etc) is more complex, detailed and realistic than before.
And well, there's also the inflation on top.
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//DEVIL//
Member
Weekend vs normal day ? Many people will just say eh I'll buy it on the weekend and play it then.
I dunno that's how I personally feel. If I am not playing the game today but on weekend. I will buy it on the weekend .
falling into hell
Member
Lol they are swimming in money now, but how much did it cost to make the game?
Mortisfacio
Member
Thursday 10am and Friday 10am. These are standard work and school times. Same time. It's not weekend vs normal day. By the same fair metric, the CCU dropped 27k on a 24 hour period.