Report: Marathon Delay Likely as Sony Cancels All Paid Marketing Plans

s reactions genius GIF
 
StreetsofBeige said:
They are caught because on one hand Sony loves SP stuff and their fans enjoy SP narratives too. Bungie has a history of making shooters with lots of lore and SP campaigns too with Halo and Destiny. So there's some expectations already baked in.

But the game has been so problematic in development and Sony needs them to rush it out the door, so they cut corners. Exactly like Concord. Another shooter that was supposed to have giant story and lore as the second coming of Star Wars. But had no SP and it's story was a bunch of cut scenes.

If Sony or Bungie cant handle SP anymore, then dont bother and make it a MP focused game. Apex and PUBG dont have SP. I dont think anyone playing COD Warzone cares. And most COD gamers probably beeline right to MP skipping whatever Captain Price is doing in SP. So you dont have to have a detailed SP campaign for a shooter to succeed.

But since they put so much resources and focus on SP, it's a disaster if it all doesnt come together at release because it looks half finished. Concord didnt even make sense. It was so choppy how they released their SP vignettes, supposedly the Amazon video didnt even have to do with any of the characters in the game. I dont know if thats actually true, since I didnt watch it. But thats what I read. Why would they do this? Because they are trying for some "it'll all come together and make sense later".

Well, if things were executed smoothly from the start, you wouldnt need to do that.
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Dude I can't believe they had dozens of those (mo-capped?) cinematics for Concord that will never be seen by anyone. I still wince at how much of a waste that was.
 
powder said:
Dude I can't believe they had dozens of those (mo-capped?) cinematics for Concord that will never be seen by anyone. I still wince at how much of a waste that was.
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Cart before the horse. Weird strategy too. Everyone understands a game will have more weapons or maps later to spice up the gameplay. But at least the core game at launch is fully featured. But dole out cinematics bit by bit for a shooter that is supposed to be the equivalent of Star Wars lore? lol.

Would had been better if they scrapped a lot of those clips and just made a SP campaign. I remember some people on this board saying those high quality cinematics arent cheap to make either. Even if they might be only a couple minutes long, each one can be expensive. Which ever employees or external contracted out studio got asked to do them, kudos. You got paid good money to be employed making pointless stuff which didnt even release with the game.
 
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pqueue said:
I just wanted another lengthy single player FPS with deep lore/history, and a multiplayer component added to it.
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Same. I don't think the lore even needs to be that deep, just write a compelling story about that supposed lead character in that big budget cinematic trailer. It seemed obvious. But then when you see the actual game it feels totally divorced from that trailer, almost like they were forced to dumb it down.
 
They should reboot it with a new director (someone who likes making single player games) and make a proper sequel or prequel to the original Marathon games

With a cool triangular box
 
StreetsofBeige said:
Cart before the horse. Weird strategy too. Everyone understands a game will have more weapons or maps later to spice up the gameplay. But at least the core game at launch is fully featured. But dole out cinematics bit by bit for a shooter that is supposed to be the equivalent of Star Wars lore? lol.

Would had been better if they scrapped a lot of those clips and just made a SP campaign. I remember some people on this board saying those high quality cinematics arent cheap to make either. Even if they might be only a couple minutes long, each one can be expensive. Which ever employees or external contracted out studio got asked to do them, kudos. You got paid good money to be employed making pointless stuff which didnt even release with the game.
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I think the only reason a single player campaign wouldn't have worked is because the individual characters were total dogshit.

I really think with Marathon and Fairgames going south now, it proves that there's definitely someone at Sony giving bad direction and approval on all of this shit. There's no way to explain it, it's beyond coincidence at this point. There's no way it was Jim Ryan responsible for setting all this up.
 
Yes. delay it. Throw more money into it hoping to salvage it. The bigger the fail, the more money lost, the better the lesson, and current Sony is not a particularly bright student, thus it needs the harshest lessons to hopefully learn something.
 
powder said:
I think the only reason a single player campaign wouldn't have worked is because the individual characters were total dogshit.

I really think with Marathon and Fairgames going south now, it proves that there's definitely someone at Sony giving bad direction and approval on all of this shit. There's no way to explain it, it's beyond coincidence at this point. There's no way it was Jim Ryan responsible for setting all this up.
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Jim and Hermen are supposed to be the people in charge of pushing for studio acquisitions and any internally made GAAS games.

But who knows. Maybe those two know nothing about GAAS and relied on some peers to feed them info who and what to go after. It's like sports. People blame management for picking draft busts. Ya, they are the ones ultimately accountable for a bad pick, but it's the scouts who do all the dirty work and recommending which players to go after. Yet in sports, how often does the scouting team get ragged on? Hardly ever.

I bet almost all sports fans dont know even one scout for their fav teams. I know I dont.
 
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StreetsofBeige said:
Jim and Hermen are supposed to be the people in charge of pushing for studio acquisitions and any internally made GAAS games.

But who knows. Maybe those two know nothing about GAAS and relied on some peers to feed them info who and what to go after. It's like sports. People blame management for picking draft busts. Ya, they are the ones ultimately accountable for a bad pick, but it's the scouts who do all the dirty work and recommending which players to go after. Yet in sports, how often does the scouting team get ragged on? Hardly ever.

I bet almost all sports fans dont know even one scout for their fav teams. I know I dont.
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I think who's to blame is whatever person or team at Sony is responsible for doing project progress "check-ins" with the first party studios. I don't entirely believe that all three of these studios suck at what they do - I think the people who have been approving or directing the progress of these games from Sony (telling them what to cut and what to add, etc.) are really to blame.

I'm not letting Jim and Hermen off the hook entirely, though lol. I just don't think they were the guys giving bad direction.
 
Bitstream said:
Hahahah this is the most clandestine black-op in corporate espionage. Fill a failing company with crappy employees and sell it to your competitor to help them hang themselves.

5 D chess maneuver, bravo!
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It would be, but I don't think Parsons is loyal to anyone but himself. Just cashing out from every angle.
 
"This information comes from Colin Moriarty."

Gv32LGr.jpeg


Seriously though I thought this dude left gaming years ago to spread the gospel of politics or something. 😂 I had no idea he was back on the gaming side.
 
Sony might be just calling the shots now because the original leadership really would have just launched the game as is in trust of the 'Bungie brand'.

This string of gaffes from Sony might just be hall of fame stuff in Gaming history, right alongside PS3 599$, Xbox One TV, EA Battlefront 2 and CP77. Top10 atleast.
 
dotnotbot said:
I'm starting to get worried about Sony
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Shouldn't it be Bungie you should be worried about? They influenced and consulted on Sony's GAAS push and so far we have:

1. Helldivers 2 (a success, but not a crazy one)
2. Concord (monumental flop)
3. Fairgames (in the process of becoming Concord 2.0)
4. Marathon (shaping up to be mid, so flop in GAAS world)

At this point someone at Sony is probably thinking: they either make Destiny 3 a massive hit or we sell the studio.
 
Guardian Monkey said:
"This information comes from Colin Moriarty."

Gv32LGr.jpeg


Seriously though I thought this dude left gaming years ago to spread the gospel of politics or something. 😂 I had no idea he was back on the gaming side.
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His channel is relatively small but he recently had Shuhei Yoshida and Neil Druckmann on his podcast. He is definitely well conected in the industry still.
 
SILKYSMOOTH30FPS said:
Reworking the whole thing into a pve game will take well over 2 years, and cost a shitton. This is not happening.
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Well, lets see what happens. A Realm Reborn had an incredibly succesful rework. Destiny had its problems too, tons of reworks. No Mans Sky managed to have a turnaround too. I'm not saying Marathon will have the same fate or outcome. But I would love to see that happening instead of a massive failure. Or even launching Marathon as a F2P Early Access style title that grows WITH the community. Could be great too.
 
Pasta la Vista said:
Pretty sure one of the main reason for the delay or cancelation of marketing plans probably has to do with the plagiarism.

They can't just advertise the game now without getting sued with all that artists work there.

If it wasn't for that, I get the feeling that Sony was really pushing Bungie to get it out the door.
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Bungie has a history of stealing other people's work, they fully deserve that shit. Is it so hard to have someone verify the sources for all the creative work? You know, to make sure that nothing disrupts a multi-million project?
 
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This is going to be worse than concord.

I cant believe how bad Herman and Jim have fucked sonys generation. Worst management fuck ups I've seen and there's been some crazy ones in this industry.
 
A delay will be way more costly than hiring or paying Antireal a fuckton of money to use their work.

Bungie has roughly 850 employees. Even if every employee only made 50k a year, a 6 month delay to scrub and rework assets would cost over $20 million.

Paying Antireal a huge lump sum of $2 million would not only save them the time of scrubbing and reworking assets, it would give them some much needed good will.

Their current plan of "rework the stolen assets so we don't have to pay Antireal" is not only way more expensive, it's makes them look like even bigger assholes than what they currently are.

But since they seem to be going down the path of scrub and rework assets, any marketing campaign they had would have been using footage from a build with stolen assets. So 100% they have to cancel their paid marketing.

They have ZERO usable footage. Only after however long it takes to scrub and rework the assets can they then start a new ad campaign.
 
With all these failed shooters I'm left asking the same question - what does this do differently to what I've played a million times before?

We've seen very little of the new Battlefield game, but when I saw someone shoot an RPG at a building and it started coming down I was like 'fuck yes I'm buckled in' immediately.

Do Sony really think people are going to get out of bed for this because it's Bungie? Their last universally acclaimed hit was 15 years ago.
 
POKEYCLYDE said:
A delay will be way more costly than hiring or paying Antireal a fuckton of money to use their work.

Bungie has roughly 850 employees. Even if every employee only made 50k a year, a 6 month delay to scrub and rework assets would cost over $20 million.

Paying Antireal a huge lump sum of $2 million would not only save them the time of scrubbing and reworking assets, it would give them some much needed good will.

Their current plan of "rework the stolen assets so we don't have to pay Antireal" is not only way more expensive, it's makes them look like even bigger assholes than what they currently are.

But since they seem to be going down the path of scrub and rework assets, any marketing campaign they had would have been using footage from a build with stolen assets. So 100% they have to cancel their paid marketing.

They have ZERO usable footage. Only after however long it takes to scrub and rework the assets can they then start a new ad campaign.
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This isn't just about Antireal.

Antireal basically proved that there was no compliance process when it comes to graphical assets, this means they have to check every single asset used and see what its origins are.

Sony legal team is probably pissed at Bungie behind the scenes.
 
POKEYCLYDE said:
Bungie has roughly 850 employees. Even if every employee only made 50k a year, a 6 month delay to scrub and rework assets would cost over $20 million.
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How do they have 850 people? How are they have so many people and still manage to steal stuff from other people. Shareholders should force anyone out who was responsible for this garbage deal.
 
Completely Sonys fault. They were swimming in success after Xbox went third party and decided to make 12 GAAS. 12. And none came out right. They shoot themselves in the foot
 
A Steam console is what we need. Then Xbox and Sony would be out of the console game and just develop things for Steam. No more console wars, no more exclusives and in the right environment, Steam
 
Fabieter said:
How do they have 850 people? How are they have so many people and still manage to steal stuff from other people. Shareholders should force anyone out who was responsible for this garbage deal.
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Have you seen the credits for Destiny 2: The Witch Queen?
They have 240 people in the art deparment and still felt the need to steal art. I guess those one-hundred and forty-three people in Studio Operations aren't doing their job managing them all.
 
xrnzaaas said:
Bungie has a history of stealing other people's work, they fully deserve that shit. Is it so hard to have someone verify the sources for all the creative work? You know, to make sure that nothing disrupts a multi-million project?
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This whole acquisition was a huge red flag. You would think Sony would have done their due diligence or at least have someone there to keep them in check as opposed to letting them operate autonomously, given their history. They got completely scammed by these frauds. They milked the retention bonuses and honestly this whole situation with Marathon has been so sketchy, almost feels like Bungie intentionally sabotaged this game.
 
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DenchDeckard said:
This is going to be worse than concord.

I cant believe how bad Herman and Jim have fucked sonys generation. Worst management fuck ups I've seen and there's been some crazy ones in this industry.
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I think you'll find what's really going to happen is Bungie have fucked themselves. People forget that what Sony actually bought were all the privately held shares, which made up roughly 2/3rds of the $3.6b. With the final third earmarked as vesting shares paid out based on performance/retention.

If the board fails to live up to its obligations then they are gone, at which point Sony steps in and takes full control, plus the ability to withhold any share payouts. If they launch an internal investigation and find any malfeasance on the part of the outgoing board they can then start legal action to claw back any previously held payments and seek punitive damages.

The way things have panned out I cannot imagine the current management team surviving much longer, and with them Bungie's ability to operate independently - they will simply get stripped down and integrated into Sony's pre-existing studio structure.
 
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