I don’t think being paid is necessarily a kiss of death. Helldivers 2 costs $40 and is a huge success.
The key is whether Marathon offers something unique and appealing enough to get people to pay vs. playing the tone of free to play MP shooter games.
Helldivers 2 did, Concord didn’t. Do I have confidence in Bungie to pull it off? No. But it doesn’t seem like Sony has an interest in making F2P MP games so they’ll see if it succeeds like HD2 and can it if not.
I was never a fan of Sony trying to chase the GAAS money anyway. Their differentiator was always great single player games. They should focus on balancing their huge budget AAA ones with more Astro Bot, Jack and Daxter, Sly Cooper type games instead of chasing the GAAS stuff IMO.