G2ThaUNiT said:
LOL yeah that's fair in regard to Tassi's assessments and how timely he tends to be, but in regard to the game itself, it's a natural decline at this point. Last year was the games "Avengers Endgame" moment. A decade of buildup leading to that expansion. After that, what's left their to do with the current game? Some crossovers to buy the game additional time it seems lol. I'll periodically check in on my old clan and out of the little over 200 we had, I'll see about a quarter of them still regularly active in the game over the past several months. It's honestly surprising that Bungie didn't take that into account, or they did, and leadership just went "nah" at the thought of making a Destiny 3. Which wouldn't surprise me, as that has been a regular reporting of higher ups ignoring developer warnings. If your game is built around it being an MMO-like experience, continuous major content drops are needed to keep the community engaged. Hopefully Bungie took the lukewarm reception to heart regarding the Marathon alpha and are working on righting that ship as best they can before it launches. The dilemma Bungie has found themselves were going to happen with or without Sony buying them. As bad as it sounds, all the savings they've had in laying off so many employees in recent times, is probably keeping them afloat currently while they continue to work on Marathon and Destiny 2 getting smaller content drops to keep the remaining playerbase engaged. |
What's sad of all of this is that even if Marathon results to be a good game it's unlikely it will be a success. One of the many things the Forbes guy said when the plagiarism tweet happened was that Bungie established the goal of being top 5 seller of the year to be a success (in Circana charts). Assuming that's true well ... that won't happen in a year with GTA6, Wolverine, chinese games, indie darlings, Nintendo games, and the forever sellers like COD and FIFA so the layoffs are very likely to happen next year.
You made mention that currently there's no plans for new Destiny 2 content and I hope it stays that way, I think they have to realice that right now whatever money they are making from new Destiny 2 content is doing more harm than good. Constant hate over the product is not only creating bad blood over Marathon but it also could create bad blood over the franchise and its future. Players are done with the game so right now it's a toxic relationship. The best move here for me would be just to end it and go low in the time they develop Destiny 3, give the players time to rest and with some luck even time to miss it.
Destiny is a huge asset, when it comes to PlayStation franchises Destiny is the most famous in China. Data shows 1/5 of all the people who played Destiny 2 on pc were from China (in their other franchises China represents around 1/10). They can't let go of that, Destiny Rising is even more proof of the franchise popularity in China and how what people want is a new game no more expansions, they have to be very careful with what they are going to do next with Destiny.
Obviously ending Destiny 2 and going low would mean more layoffs but that's unavoidable at this point. As for the development of Destiny 3, Nixxes and XDEV are helping the development of SAROS so once that's done I would use them to back up what's left of Bungie.
The worst part of all of this is that now that Bungie is a PS Studio other studios aren't protected from their bs anymore so the layoffs could be from other studios. That is going to piss me off. I may not be interested in Marathon anymore but oh boy I wish them the best of miracles next year so this won't happen.
