coachmcguirk91
Member
The more you actually play the game, the more you enjoy the visual art design. It is certainly jarring at first, though. The art design will hold up 10 years from now extremely well
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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)
TVexperto
Member
How dare you! People are sleeping/working/enjoying sunny weather!!!! It will hit 500k once everybody in USA wakes up!!!
Von Hugh
Member
Instant_Classic
Junior Member
It's funny how naive some people are here.
Either the game starts off strong or it doesn't.
It's rare for a lower CCU game to shoot up after the initial launch period.
Guilty_AI
Member
Dont have a beef with the visuals, but Metal Eden from last year has similar art style so i wouldn't exactly call it unique
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delishcaek
Member
The game is in the topseller list on #4, it keeps on selling well, however CCU aren't going up but down.
This implies people buy, play for 1-2 hours and then refund/bouncing off (especially on the US side).
Stockholm syndrome. Lmao
Chuck Berry
Gold Member
Moridianae
Member
Is that thing about ARC and Marathon on PSN from an article or just someone stating?
KanKamAndNob
Member
Dude, you're essentially giving us the "I eat nothing but cheap McDonald's cheeseburgers everyday of my life". You might as well tell us you only play sports games or Solitaire at this point my dude.
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coachmcguirk91
Member
Most GAAS games around launch peak in their first weekend. Even with charting in top 5-10 in the days afterwards. Marathon seemingly has a very good retention rate so far
hyperbertha
Member
No. Every single thing has exceptions. Generally, people consider angelina jolie as attractive. Some clowns think she is ugly. Doesn't mean her beauty is subjective. It is objective fact that angelina jolie in her prime was hot as fuck.
diffusionx
Gold Member
the game is incredibly unfriendly to newcomers. So yes I can easily see this happening.
This still might be the right move though, if the growth curve is well done it can be more rewarding long term than ARC Raiders.
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LyricalShrike
Member
I'm beginning to think that you don't know the definition of subjective since you keep using opinions as examples of fact. People who believe that the earth is flat are objectively wrong since the theory has been fully disproved for centuries. 99 out of 100 people thinking Angelina Jolie is beautiful doesn't make her objectively beautiful since 1 person who disagrees exists and there is no empirical way to change their opinion. Beauty is just as subjective as art as evidenced by the myriad of subcultures based on non-conventional looks. What you're describing in your examples is mainstream appeal which changes according to the times. Personal dislike doesn't change the subjectivity of art. Objectively, Marathon is a work of art as it is a product of a creative endeavor. Whether or not its a good or noteworthy work is a matter for debate.
Personally, Marathon isnt for me. Art I do not enjoy is still art. My opinion doesn't invalidate the opinion of somebody else who loves the game's creative choices.
Bonkerzzz
Member
*not a sprint
Roman Empire
Member
I can't refund the game but ngl it's getting somewhat stale. Cryo Archive might be a make or break moment for Marathon.
P:axMagellanic
Member
Exactly, 'art as subjective' is post modernist, commie gobbledygook bullshit.
Chuck Berry
Gold Member
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Kerotan
Member
The house always wins.
AgatonSax
Member
Some devs are working hard to eliminate irksome gamers from the equation, to be sure.
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
Slay the Spire 2 just came out, lol
Chuck Berry
Gold Member
Natty Ice also tastes like shit, but keep drinking it and you'll get used to it.
Plague Doctor
Member
Me thinks they bought the wrong studio for their GaaS initiative.
Baemono
Member
Sony earned more profit from a game released 5 months ago than a game released 4 days ago*
TheMan
Member
Well, Sony didn't develop Arc raiders so any money they received was pure profit. People will count Marathon's budget against Sony since Sony owns bungie, so even under significantly better circumstances it may have taken some time for Marathon profits to surpass Arc
That said Marathon is still flopping
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CentralScrutinizer
Member
Side tangent. Sony's number one priority should be to make the most pro-consumer, seamless box / ecosystem, and a system experienced that drives people to their system over PC so they can maintain this level of profit from the 30% cut.
I feel like PS5 was the first time I felt the system level experience get worse gen-on-gen (outside of load times) and I think they should be doing more to make their console offer more than what Steam does.
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StreetsofBeige
Member
Looking at Marathon and some other games, it looks like the peaks and valleys have roughly a 2x gap.
So if Marathon bottomed at 25k late last night, it'll probably do about 50k at the peak when it does its best around 10-11pm.
So if Marathon bottomed at 25k late last night, it'll probably do about 50k at the peak when it does its best around 10-11pm.
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yurinka
Member
As I said the difference of the first day doesn't mean a shit because many games -like the two examples I gave- peaked outside the first weekend.
The difference of the first day may vary a lot depending on how the players of that game are distributed across the timezones vs the launch timezone. The second and future days have would have a mode equal coverage of the global userbase.
We also have to remember that CCU isn't representative of game saler or revenue, even the daily active users. If we have 2 games that sell 1M units but the game A sold most of them in a single region (let's say western Europe) and the game B sold them evenly across the world, the game A will show a bigger CCU peak and a lower lowest point, while game B will show a smaller peak and a higher floor. Even if both sold the same and made the same amount of money.
And well, in any case the drop has been minimal, and the important is going to be the revenue and daily userbase (particularly its user retention) in the long term trend and for all the platforms, not just PC. We have to remember that Steam doesn't represent even all the PC users since the game also is in other stores.
And? Same applies for most Sony games outside maybe a dozen of them, and Marathon just released. It will make way more money over time.
Do you think they should cancel Marvel Tokon, Wolverine, Intergalactic and so on because platform holders make more money? And that they never should have made games like Astro Bot?
And well if instead of comparing the whole life of Arc Raiders versus the launch Marathon weekend you only compared their launch weekends Sony made more money with Marathon because got almost the 100% of it instead of a 30%.
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Mortisfacio
Member
Can you cite a single live service game that had declining numbers the opening weekend, instead of rising CCU, and was viewed as performing well? Not even an argument. Genuine question. I can't think of a single game that meets this criteria.
Negotiator101
Member
I get the low player count and interest in that can seem odd (it's pretty much the same for every game though) but this is Bungie, most here would have played their previous games and been fan's of their work. So interest in their new game was always going to be high.
Negotiator101
Member
Chuck can you really say anything after MindsEye?
yurinka
Member
I haven't checked it because it's totally irrelevant, but probably a few because releasing AAA games on Thursday became popular recently, in the past was more common to release on Friday.
I assume they changed it because (at least in my studio) to release stuff on Friday meant that sometimes some things get bonked, particularly in the server side, and need day one fixes just after release. Meaning, to reduce to almost zero the work of mostly the server coders during weekends we moved to release on Thursday.
And that was just for frequent post launch game content, problems at game launch instead on releasing game updates usually are generate more issues, particularly when the game has considerably more players than usual for the team.
Chuck Berry
Gold Member
Of course I can. MindsEye is like the Steel Reserve of gaming.
Marathon is straight piss. Drink it up like R. Kelly
Negotiator101
Kacho
Gold Member
Even DR3AM is dunking
coachmcguirk91
Member
Battlefield 6. Reached its peak on launch day
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Mortisfacio
Member
"Probably a few" doesn't actually reference a single one, though. And It's not irrelevant. Arc Raiders released on a thursday and the CCU jumped 100k that weekend. The single player game that released the same day did 2x the CCU during the weekend. Marathon didn't. Legitimately every game I've searched that's been perceived as doing well saw higher player counts post-release. Marathon didn't. The weekend saw declining numbers. Are we supposed to pretend Marathon is the first game in history to see declining numbers opening weekend, but we label it as a success?
Mortisfacio
Member
Battlefield 6 isn't performing well, though. It was seen as a successful launch because 750k is a high CCU no matter which way you spin it, but it's seen a 91% player falloff. Marathon declined while never launching to stellar numbers to begin with. Nowhere can it be viewed as the criteria of "performing well".
Cyberpunkd
Banned
I checked the Twitch stream, the dude was just sitting in the middle doing nothing with his friends checking some containers. What?
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
Of course I can. MindsEye is like the Steel Reserve of gaming.
Marathon is straight piss. Drink it up like R. Kelly
The Mad Draklor
Member
But tomorrow's Taco Tuesday.
Hari Seldon
Gold Member
I'm curious what the play is now. Do they put more money and dev effort into this and try to appeal to casuals, or do they abandon ship and put this in maintenance mode? I dunno if I trust Bungie to fix this game after they spent so much time and money on such a small product. This game is like 1/4th the size of a game from the 2010s.
Bernardougf
Member
They cant shitcan this game without doing the same to Bungie ... so the spirits at Bungie knitting classes must be at an all time high.
Guilty_AI
Member
That sounds like a good time actually.
Fake
Member
'We don't use the word fun.'
Guilty_AI
Member
Guess aim it towards a hardcore audience and try to milk them for what they're worth.
bender
What time is it?
Guilty_AI
Member
Never hung out with your bros at a container graveyard?
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
1757, David Hume:
"Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty."
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Totally agree with the "to this point" part. It's been down-right TERRIBLE! I see no way for this acquisition to be viewed as a success, until 2030 at the earliest.
yurinka
Member
It's dumb and nonsensical to say a game is a failure because other had more concurrent users particularly looking at the first few days. Following that reasoning you can also say Slay the Spire 2 is a failure because Counter Strike 2 has a 1.5M CCU all time peak, which is 3x bigger.
We don't have to pretend anything because the CCU peak difference between the first and second day is totally irrelevant to the success of a game and doesn't mean a shit.
You asked for examples, here's one: Marvel Rivals. Released on Friday, the second day (Saturday) had a worse daily CCU peak. Its all time CCU peak was on its 6th weekend, after recovering from a declining trend of the first almost four weeks or so.
Steam CCUs don't mean a shit other than amount of players connecected at the same time in a given moment, it's mostly a metric for server programmers, useful to see if they will need to scale up or down the servers.
Other than this just gives a rough idea from outside the company of the relative size of the userbase in Steam of a game compared to others (in this case we see Arc Raiders had more players than Marathon at launch) and for GaaS to see if in the long term the userbase of a game decreases more or less or -in a few extremenly successful cases with exceptional user retention- grows over time. Or to get a rough estimate of if when having a peak caused by a meaningful game update and the peak is over, if the remaining userbase is bigger than the previous one or not.
But there's also other factors: historically Bungie had their userbase primarly on console while Arc Raiders has it primarly in PC. And Arc Raiders has a more mainstream friendly PvE approach while Marathon has more hardcore PvP approach.
When both cases are successful they difference on the hardcore one having a smaller niche with worse short term retention (some users scared/frustrated by difficulty) but better in the long term (those engaged keep there for longer), and having a better long term retention typically means a considerably better ARPU plus less costs in user acquisition (marketing campaigns) and less post launch content dev costs needed to keep the same level of success in the long term.
But again, Steam CCU only tell a small part of the big picture and can't be used to see how a game is performing. Particularly only having a handful days. It's more useful to compare long term trends. It's still too early.
The important data will be after a few months the amount of sales in all platforms, the LTV (life time value, average amount of money spent by the player with game purchase+addons) and user retention measured with DAUs and not CCU, particularly D1, D3, D7, D30 and the one a former boss of mine who later became a top King executive told me was the most decisive one to predict the success of a GaaS: D180.
These codes are the percent of players that continue playing the game after that amount of days since they started to play it (day 1, day 3 etc).
Well, I wouldn't say it's terrible. I'd say it's ok: they underperformed in some specific areas but had a good progress in the more broader ones. So far:
- Destiny 2 underperformed with Lightfall, but did a great job with The Final Shape and extended its support after it even if being a smaller one, going beyond the initial plans. Sony financials recognized the brand value of the game specifically (not the Destiny IP) was around $200M worse than initially estimated in the acquisition, which means their estimation and money made with it was way higher than this. Being 8 years and a half old, the game is sunseting as expected
- As agreed in the acquisition, moved some Bungie staff to SIE/PS Studios positions, to share knowledge, expertise, data and tools mainly for GaaS, but I assume also for IP creation, MP and shooters
- Highly grew the team and later reduced it by the agreed redundacy reduction, and staff moved to other SIE/PS Studios positions, plus later did another layoff linked to the Lightfall underperformance and Marathon delay. After these changes that involved two layoffs, their workforce is slightly higher now that they were in the acquisition. Pretty likely got some ex-Bungie devs back once Firewalk was shut down
- Bungie experts in GaaS specific areas joined the experts in GaaS specific areas of SIE publishing, PS Studios HQ and the other PS Studios dev teams to create the Sony Live Service Center of Excellence, where the all of them (not just the Bungie ones) shared GaaS specific knowledge, created a best practices guide for the teams and a series of reviews of the GaaS specific areas for all the GaaS SIE projects in the key points of a GaaS (this doesn't mean at all Bungie that cancelled games of other studios or that told them how to do them, asked to change things etc)
- Mainly thanks to the GaaS and off-PS push the SIE first party revenue aprox. doubled matching the goal mentioned by Jim Ryan in 2021 (still having 7 GaaS to be released after the initial deadline, which later got removed), and around 40% of that first party revenue now comes from GaaS and apparently around a similar percentage comes from Off-PS
- Their integration in SIE and later within PS Studios concluded
- Team LFG game seems to be progressing well, they concluded successfully its incubation and formed the new team
- Destiny Rising got released with big success
- Marathon got a delay, the game seems to be great seeing the early user reviews and impressions, and there are some positive KPIs but the game despite not being a Concord-like failure, it isn't either a Helldivers 2/Arc Raiders levels huge hit at least in Steam (something that could be expected due to the hardcore niche nature of the game)
- Before the acquisition were starting to work in non-gaming adaptations of these IPs, something that would get benefited with the acquisition. They didn't announce anyting, meaning pretty likely may continue working on it (probably still in early steps)
- After the restructuring Bungie was said to focus going forward in the Marathon and Destiny IPs. With Marathon and Destiny Rising shipped, and Destiny 2 support pretty likely nearing its end, very likely now in addition to some extra minor Destiny 2 support for the short/mid term, they'll have 'small' (for a Bungie context, or compared to a new AAA under development) teams supporting Destiny Rising and Marathon and will focus first on trying to grow Marathon during its first months post launch but very likely will switch their main focus to develop their main next game, which maybe already started it before and maybe was put it on hold to support the Marathon and Destiny Rising releases for a while. That next game should be a PvE focused Destiny 3 unless they're stupid
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