PlayStation Nation |OT| Playing Astro Bot on the Horizon Until Dawn

[DekutheEvilClown]

Marathon was only made by 300 people out of Bungie's entire staff at peak development. This was after Project Payback got cancelled in summer of 2024 and the team got moved onto Marathon. Before that it was unknown how many people were in development, but this was certainly not a big priority game. Maybe 150 out of Bungie's ~1200 staff.

The crazy expectations for this game come from a lot of misunderstanding and inflated development costs because people don't understand it was a side project for Bungie. The entire studio is no hinging on this game. Destiny 3 is still a guaranteed money maker one day. The IP rights alone are worth hundreds of millions.

People also overlook the fact that Destiny 2 was a platinum(top 12 based on revenue) game on steam ever year since Sony purchased them up to 2025(when it was silver). The floor for Platinum is almost certainly in excess of $100m+ a year. So the game was very likely make several hundred million a year for a good few years after the purchase.

Bungie overpromised on revenue targets and didn't deliver. They paid the price for that and might pay a further price, but that's not the same as the studio being on its last legs or something. Bungie will hav easily generated revenues in excess of half a billion since the purchase. Compare that to some single player studios that might go 5-6 years without a release and have almost no revenue for the last 2-3 years of that. Arrowhead didn't release a game for about 9 years and we're getting full funded by Sony.