Super Lemon Drop
Gold Member
Sony published the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2024 games that got the biggest number of GOTY awards these years, plus also released many others that also got awarded or nominated. Plus broke the sales records of PS exclusive games with new titles they published in 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024.
Destiny 2 is a huge success too (top 10 game in PC every year) and their most recent expansion, The Final Shape, got a 90+ MC
Sony got full control of the studio back in July 2022, when they bought 100% of the company (and did put Hermen Hulst and Eric Lempel on its board of directors). It's a fully owned SIE subsidiary that reports to Hermen Hulst, like any other SIE first party studio.
The only difference with the rest is that Sony decided that they would continue publishing in all platforms day one, and using the Bungie publishing label.
It's just a delay because the devs need more time. Same as happened in tons of other games like Zelda BotW, GoWR or GT7. Pretty likely they will get around half a year more to properly finish and tweak what they already were planning to do. Out of the announced things they'll focus on until release, the only change is that they'll implement prox. chat and will tweak it to make solo or duo teams not that difficult.
At this point, a very successful shooter for them is Destiny 2. But with Marathon don't target to that level of success.
But Marathon targets a different and way smaller, more hardcore, survival and PvP focused niche: the extraction shooter. That subgenre had a single big hit: Escape from Tarkov. Before Tarkov, maybe the closest very successful example would be a part of The Division (small portion / game mode of the game), which were the Dark Zones (PvPvE extraction shooter areas).
Other than Tarkov, the extraction shooter is a niche subgenre that still didn't have huge success in consoles or the mainstream market. So different companies -like Bungie- are trying to bring the subgenre to a more mainstream, less hardcore, console friendly bigger market. Being the first one to achieve this means there's no clear reference for the potential market.
I am having a hard time deciding if you're trying to be reasonable and give them the benefit of the doubt because you are kind and innocent and see the simple good in things, or if you're just another clueless corporate apologist who honestly thinks Sony is giving this an earnest effort for the right reasons because you guzzle from the fountain of AAA toxicity...
