Will Marathon Survive?

[DekutheEvilClown]

Mnementh said:

DekutheEvilClown said:

This is almost certainly not true. There was one source for this claim, a podcast that also claimed the game cost $400m to develop. That budget was debunked by Christopher Dring and Jason Schreier(pretty reliable sources). It is also a known fact that the budget for the game was $50m initially, through publicly available ProbablyMonsters investor material. Sony only owned the company for a small period of dev time and the studio was never bigger than 150 people(this would be ~$15m a year operation cost roughly for a big established dev, probably less here).

The Concord story is a lot less interesting when viewed through the lens of actual facts and legitimate information

What are you saying? You answer "that is not true" to the claim that there was not much hate pre-launch. Then you go on debunking a completely different claim.

The $400M number came from Colin Moriarty (a playstation supporter throughout the years) and was repeated through classical media:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/09/21/new-report-says-sonys-concord-cost-400-million-to-make/
That is a case that we don't know internal numbers and have to rely on internal sources. That number was misleading, as it included the studio acquisition cost. These numbers got mixed up and lead to the $400M figure. It wasn't a case of made up information, it was a case of misinterpreting the sparse sources of information that make it out.

And about that the game was mostly met with desinterest: we were there! I really didn't even heard about the game (and I am not exactly disconnected) until it was reported that the numbers were low. And then - after that was known - the dunking started. Not before.

I'm talking about the part quoted clearly. About Sony expecting it to be a massive multimedia franchise. There is absolutely no evidence they had any significant expectations for it considering the studio size, and therefore budget, was low and the marketing was nothing special.

The $400m number is just a completely fabricated number with no basis in reality that only one single person ever claimed. It doesn't include the studio acquisition because that would have cost almost nothing considering they had exactly one game and Sony owned it. It would have amounted to something more like reimbursing ProbablyMonsters for all their costs incurred in funding the project initially and then a premium on top.