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Marathon releases to 87,000 players on Steam and 87% Positive Reviews (sponsored by coachmcguirk91)

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So will Bungie survive this?

It's funny how when they joined Sony they basically came in with an air of superiority. It was like "we'll remain independent, we aren't part of playstation studios, we'll keep releasing games wherever we want, we'll have a say in other GAAS projects at Sony, etc".

Fast forward a few years and now they are basically like:
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Before you guys start making fun of the game for today please educate yourselves and remember it's national play outside day
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Seems that people go outside only when there are GAAS releases (except ARC Raiders...it was raining that day)
 
It's funny how when they joined Sony they basically came in with an air of superiority. It was like "we'll remain independent, we aren't part of playstation studios, we'll keep releasing games wherever we want, we'll have a say in other GAAS projects at Sony, etc".

lol pure unfiltered hubris
 
Fuck the haters, I decided to pick up a physical "copy" of the game. The Marathon color palette with its use of only 4 primary colors that light up are amazing. See you chuds in the OT!!

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How long until Hulst announces all Playstation teams are going to concentrate on deck building rogue likes in the future?
I mean, you're joking, but look at the largest indie slop games selling too. Cheap games sometimes developed in mere weeks by teams of 3 to a dozen guys selling 100's of thousands or even millions of copies.
Schedule I, Peak, R.E.P.O, RV There Yet, or the current YapYap & Super Battle Golf which are doing okay.

There's a formula for that slop and they are done on frozen pizza and cola budgets with incredible ROI. Sony could fund a bunch of small teams, tell them to be creative and go wild.
 
It's funny how when they joined Sony they basically came in with an air of superiority. It was like "we'll remain independent, we aren't part of playstation studios, we'll keep releasing games wherever we want, we'll have a say in other GAAS projects at Sony, etc".

Fast forward a few years and now they are basically like:
Ralph Wiggum Danger GIF
lol imagine panic-buying Bungie during the pandemic gaming bubble, then seeing this shit:

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Sounds more like an adult daycare than a business. I suspect more layoffs and restructuring are coming soon, if they even survive.
 
So it's Saturday. Afternoon on the east coast. It's at 63k and at #26 overall most played right now. Fell out of top 20 on a weekend.

Not bad numbers if this were some smaller dev team, but the alleged $250mil budget and $3.6bil purchase of Bungie? Can't imagine anyone in corporate is happy with these numbers.
 
So it's Saturday. Afternoon on the east coast. It's at 63k and at #26 overall most played right now. Fell out of top 20 on a weekend.

Not bad numbers if this were some smaller dev team, but the alleged $250mil budget and $3.6bil purchase of Bungie? Can't imagine anyone in corporate is happy with these numbers.
I dont expect them to be happy.. but if they are "surprised" they are even more retarded and incompetent than I initially thought.
 
It doesn't change the fact that Marathon is still a game with AAA budgets, and Sony won't be satisfied

Never said anything opposing that

"Niche" is not an excuse that Sony wants to hear from Bungie.

The "genre" is niche as hell, no matter how many try to make it a big thing, extraction shooter won't be as big as BR or what Hero Shooters used to be, I'm not excusing Bungie or Sony here, just stating what's obvious, Sony won't every see the ROI for the Bungie acquisition and Bungie's last hail mary is Destiny 3, but after milking D2 dry I don't see how they can make it
 
See my previous post then for your better example.
Forza Horizon 5 isn't a good example as the first date in Steamdb is the official launch date but over a million were playing the premium edition 'early access' starting Nov 5th (not millions concurrently or just on Steam but still).
 
Here's the potential sad fact about this. The game is solid for its fanbase. It's got a lot of really good shit in there. Yet we're at this fucking oddball time where these big companies are spending way too much money all based on massive expectations that are based on unicorn farts.

Marathon is a game that should exist, but for its audience of ~30-60k CCU, and not some imagined ~250k CCU

I think a great outcome for this would be for the Marathon team to branch out from Bungie into a new studio based on realistic projections and let them play to their strengths. The money on the project is already spent, Bungie need to suck that up. The worst they can do is shut it all down and fail another project because they did their numbers as well as some of the math I've seen posted in this thread.
 
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I just remembered my post from the marathon prediction thread:

80k launch day. possibly with an upwards trajectory if the word of mouth is good.

bungie has a built in audience I think. so it will not be a failure. but I also don't see it being an insane success.

although they seemingly improved the game a lot, so who knows.

I was selling it slightly short on launch day it seems.

let's see if the second part of my prediction comes true and it actually increase over time, or if the opposite will happen
 
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Forza Horizon 5 isn't a good example as the first date in Steamdb is the official launch date but over a million were playing the premium edition 'early access' starting Nov 5th (not millions concurrently or just on Steam but still).
When has early access (a smaller group of people paying more) been a higher peak than release date?

Steamdb includes early paid access btw though I'm not sure if it did back then or not for you to make that claim
 
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I just remembered my post from the marathon prediction thread:



I was selling it slightly short on launch day it seems.

let's see if the second part of my prediction comes true and it actually increase over time, or if the opposite will happen
The bleeding seems to have stopped. They are on pace for similar Steam peaks as yesterday, if not better

Still very annoyed OP title hasn't been edited to reflect an 87% Steam User score. People are really enjoying it
 
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The bleeding seems to have stopped. They are on pace for similar Steam peaks as yesterday, if not better

Still very annoyed OP title hasn't been edited to reflect an 87% Steam User score. People are really enjoying it

I'm thinking about picking it up if it stabilizes at these levels. It's a very well-made game.
 
When has early access (a smaller group of people paying more) been a higher peak than release date?

Steamdb includes early paid access btw though I'm not sure if it did back then or not for you to make that claim
SteamDB first day is Nov 9th, early access was Nov 5th. It probably wasn't higher in the early access (1.2 million 'players' vs 6.7 million 'players' according to leaderboards) but it meant that there were effectively two launch dates spreading out the players.
 
The last ditch if this is really a failure by Sonys metrics is all hands on Destiny 3.

Destiny 3, COULD, save the studio if it's in demise BUT will Sony give them the time todo it right AND give them a studio lead to keep it on track?

Destiny 2 has so much content and systems at this point that to launch D3 with a fraction would be disastrous. If it has half the content but a lot of new things to see and do it's plausible. Their largest hurdle? The D2 engine is very old now visually repurposing it is a bad move.
Destiny 3, in whatever year it hypothetically launched in, would be potentially the biggest launch that year. Millions of players are simply waiting for that to happen, and if they do it right, it could go on for however long they'd like with the right support.
 
The bleeding seems to have stopped. They are on pace for similar Steam peaks as yesterday, if not better

Still very annoyed OP title hasn't been edited to reflect an 87% Steam User score. People are really enjoying it

The bleeding may stop, but how long does it maintain said count?

All games experience some level of loss, particularly after opening weekend.

So it will lose more users, so what level is consistent and is it acceptable how many it loses over time until it stabilizes? Those are important questions.
 
The bleeding seems to have stopped. They are on pace for similar Steam peaks as yesterday, if not better
All games have a CCU mountain every day, peaking in the gaming hours (evening/early night) of the territories where that game is more popular, and having a valley in terrotories where isn't popular.

In this case, being a western shooter peaks in the western EU/USA peak hours. The first day had a peak of 88,337, the second 78,498 and today pretty likely will be higher (normal being a Saturday), so far is 70,665.

All games experience some level of loss, particularly after opening weekend.

So it will lose more users, so what level is consistent and is it acceptable how many it loses over time until it stabilizes? Those are important questions.
The normal case is to lose users over time, particularly after the launch peak, and after that to have a valley until the next meaningful update, which normally causes a smaller peak than the launch one.

But there are exceptions of some games that have a so good user retention that -outside the peaks- they grow over time. Until obviously some day start to decrease.
 
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The bleeding may stop, but how long does it maintain said count?

All games experience some level of loss, particularly after opening weekend.

So it will lose more users, so what level is consistent and is it acceptable how many it loses over time until it stabilizes? Those are important questions.

It's an interesting question for Marathon. Given that it had extensive public testing I'm guessing it brought in a solid core of players already sold on it, and the marmite visuals prevented bringing in masses who would cause that big early bounce off. So we might be seeing it hit a core right off and hold on much more than we'd see a normal heavy fall off over the first week.
 
All games have a CCU mountain every day, peaking in the gaming hours (evening/early night) of the territories where that game is more popular, and having a valley in terrotories where isn't popular.

In this case, being a western shooter peaks in the western EU/USA peak hours. The first day had a peak of 88,337, the second 78,498 and today pretty likely will be higher (normal being a Saturday), so far is 70,665.

Another element is the price - are people likelier to stay to get their money's worth of they had to pay $40?

Worked for Helldivers.
 
Visuals and imagery plays a big part for me, the models are horrible the guns look bad, but that's just me... If I knew nothing about either arc or marathon and someone said pick one it's arc all day just given better overall look
 
Another element is the price - are people likelier to stay to get their money's worth of they had to pay $40?

Worked for Helldivers.
Yes, and also for others like Arc Raiders. The good think of having to pay something like that also is that the in-game economy can be way more relaxed with the monetization, since with some minimal average revenue per user from addons the game already made all the game it needs from a user.

While in case of F2P most users never pay, so the game design needs to be aggresive to compensate with the monetization of those who pay, and also trying to convert the biggest amount possible of non-payers.

It also highly reducers the cheaters. Because -as I understand- banning them often means they have to buy the game again with a different account.
 
Funny thing is i dont think the ccu would of been that much higher even if the game had been F2P. It would of been higher obviously but i dont think it would of been double or more.
 
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The bleeding may stop, but how long does it maintain said count?

All games experience some level of loss, particularly after opening weekend.

So it will lose more users, so what level is consistent and is it acceptable how many it loses over time until it stabilizes? Those are important questions.
100%, but I am quite sure Bungie and Sony are thinking long term. This version of Marathon is so much better than the Alpha 10 months ago. I am confident it will be a very different experience 6 months to a year from now

Probably looking at 30-40k daily peaks on Steam during S1. That would seem to be ideal. Hopefully Bungie can evolve Marathon similarly to how Destiny evolved over time
 
100%, but I am quite sure Bungie and Sony are thinking long term.
If they want to grow the game, they are going to have to make it more friendly to newbies and lesser skilled players.

It's simply too sweaty at the moment. That's great for extraction games. But they will have to appeal to a different audience.

If not, it will be a game with a smaller, dedicated use base.
 
If they want to grow the game, they are going to have to make it more friendly to newbies and lesser skilled players.

It's simply too sweaty at the moment. That's great for extraction games. But they will have to appeal to a different audience.

If not, it will be a game with a smaller, dedicated use base.

I would love to see an arena mode where you use but can't lose your loot from extraction.
 
If they want to grow the game, they are going to have to make it more friendly to newbies and lesser skilled players.

It's simply too sweaty at the moment. That's great for extraction games. But they will have to appeal to a different audience.

If not, it will be a game with a smaller, dedicated use base.
Yeah, I don't think it will ever be a game that averages 100k daily peaks, but it is nearly as hardcore as people make it out to be. The on-boarding is just sensory overload for the first 5 hours. I am not sure how you fix that other than good long term word of mouth
 
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Yeah, I don't think it will ever be a game that averages 100k daily peaks, but it is nearly as hardcore as people make it out to be. The on-boarding is just sensory overload for the first 5 hours. I am not sure how you fix that other than good long term word of mouth
I can only use myself as an example.

I'd love to buy the game. Bungie remain one of my favourite developers. I'm simply not good enough, nor do I have enough time to get good enough, to (forgive the pun) extract fun from the game.

It's basically the feel of Trials of Osiris writ large. Too intimidating for an old boy like me.
 
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