Destiny 2 final update, and steam numbers are through the roof. 166k in-game right now and still climbing.

If Bungie really are only working on Marathon and have nothing else for the foreseeable future... What a decision.

Destiny players gotta speak with their wallets. Destiny 2's entire collection of purchasable DLC/expansions is only $25 for the next week. They gotta buy the collection for everyone they can think of, buy the MTX that are available. Crashing the servers won't mean a damn thing to Bungie/Sony if they're just accessing a "free to play" game and don't spend a penny.

Idk man you make it sound like they went Marathon over Destiny because it was either a better game or a better business decision when the initial plan was for Destiny 2 to be alive at least a couple years more in parallel with Marathon but Destiny 2 never stopped bleeding money since acquisition. Marathon just happens to be cheaper to update and maintain and that's clearly the new plan, stop the bleeding.  

It's cool to see the Destiny community putting numbers, that's how you get the attention of the big companies like Sony but where was that support when the game was actually alive? And I understand the blame can't be put only in the players, the ex CEO was responsible of all of this but even then asking for more when they weren't supporting anymore ... 

It's unfortunately pretty simple, there was nothing to be excited about anymore, and the little content that did release was crap.

The Star Wars crossover was a cheap cash grab and it felt like a desperation move in-game. The height of the Final Shape expansion brought new excitement at either a Destiny 3 or a new high-profile story arc to look forward to. Neither of those things happened.

The game has felt like it was on life support since the new plan of how the game would continue was announced. If there's nothing to look forward to, then players won't remain. There's other games to play at that point. Bungie had laid out a 5 year roadmap for Destiny 2 in 2020, and they didn't plan for anything after that.

A significant portion of the Destiny playerbase ran a hate campaign against their own game for years, got shocked when they actually ceased development on the game, and turned up all like “we were just joking, guys! We love it really. Please don’t go!”

The last paid expansion had a steam peak of 61k, and I don’t know how much it cost to develop but it was probably expensive as Bungie seems to struggle with controlling costs. 

Bungie better be working on Destiny 3, it's clearly what their players would want.

If they are, it'll take a LONG time. They're down to something like 800 employees total from having a peak of around 1,400-1,600 in 2023, and according to Jason Schreier, Bungie's getting ready for yet another round of "significant" layoffs. They would need a lot of assistance from other Sony studios.

The worst part? Bungie knew in 2020 when the story arc would end. They could've assigned even a small team by that time to start pre-production on a Destiny 3. They chose not to, and they're now reaping what they sowed.

A Destiny 3 could've been in full production by now, and they wouldn't have lost many of their developers with Sony knowing a proper successor was in development alongside Marathon. But.....nope.

Yeah, they probably are starting it only this year, it would be nice if Sony had some other studios help a little with the rough part of developing assets when Bungie focus on story and gameplay elements.

If they stick with Marathon only and it never reaches a bigger audience, they are cooked.

Unless they could've got Destiny 3 ready for 2025, Sony would've pulled the plug on it I feel.

But that ship has sailed I am sure. There's no way Sony is going to greenlight a Destiny 3 now; the upfront investment is not a financially sound decision for anyone to be making in this economy.

Another Destiny game that is more like a traditional FPS with a story mode, multiplayer mode, with PVE and PVP elements could still do massive numbers. It doesn't have to be a live service game with constant updates lol.

It's certainly one way for Bungie to keep the budget in check.