I do agree, the various scandals won't help, the lukewarm reception to the alpha, then ARC Raiders doesn't help matters because practically every comment I've seen is that Arc Raiders is a much better extraction shooter.

Is it really an over-saturated genre though? Genuine question because I can't think of many extraction shooters on console, the most well known one is Tarkov which isn't on console and isn't on Steam, I do think there's probably still a market for good extraction shooters and the reception to Arc Raiders points to that, it's just that Marathon doesn't sound very interesting.

I feel it's the same case with Fairgames, with Payday 3 falling flat on its face, it opened the door for competitors, but the games have to be good first and Fairgames reception has also been poor and the playtests reportedly aren't good either.

Bungie definitely lost a lot of veterans from the Halo days, though they ain't managed to do much lately either, Lol. But I would still say that Bungie's gunplay is still some of the best in the industry, Bungie is still full with talent but it's the awful direction dragging it down, that falls on the leadership. It has always been Bungie's leadership dragging them down.

Save Bungie by gutting the leadership.

I don't think Marathon will bomb, I think it will have a fairly decent-big launch, largely due to Bungie's name alone which is still massive, especially among a casual audience who won't even be aware of half of this drama, but the real complications come post-launch and if they manage to keep the players stuck around, I don't think given what I've heard about Marathon, they will be able to do so, and I think Arc Raiders could really hurt Marathon and if Marathon is delayed near GTA 6 then that will be pretty awful for them. Think they should have just done Destiny 3 and kept Marathon closer to the original.

Destiny 2 is still pretty popular today, even in 2024 it was in Steam's Top 12 by Gross Revenue for the whole of 2024. But Bungie as a whole is screwing up, they had multiple projects in development, a Destiny spinoff called Payback was cancelled, Matter was cancelled, then that team went on to work on a similar project, which was also cancelled, Lol. Gummy Bears was moved out of Bungie and into SIE. Management took on so many projects and it backfired, basically anyone not on Destiny 2 or Marathon have been fired and management still receives millions for doing a shit job. All these projects in development and only one is managing to crawl out (Marathon) which has also had stupid interference from management. Incubating all these projects also resulted in them neglecting Destiny 2, which was actually their cash cow. 

But anyone who has followed Bungie throughout the Halo and Destiny days knows that Bungie has always been a shitshow management wise, Lol. Even Microsoft when they were acquiring everyone only a few years ago reportedly passed on acquiring Bungie again because they "identified a high burn-rate risk" for Bungie, which basically means Bungie is shit with money. Bungie was always a mess though, people just gave them a pass because Halo was brilliant but basically every Halo had an awful development as well, Lmao.

Siphoning money from Destiny to put towards now multiple cancelled projects, Destiny has to fund all Bungie projects and only 1 has managed to actually see some chance of release. Bungie's senior management is trash, they make consistently bad choices and still hand themselves millions in bonuses even when they miss targets. First thing Sony should have done was fire the entire upper management. I am begging Sony to fire Bungie's upper management and take control even if it means turning Bungie exclusive and I never play another Bungie game again because I don't want to see my childhood favourite studio slowly crawl to shutdown because of awful management.

Apparently Colin Moriarty has cited sources, that Playstation has cancelled all paid marketing for the game. I would take that as rumour at the moment, but given the overall situation a likely one.

"I was told by someone familiar with marketing plans in a key overseas market that there are now no plans to do paid marketing for Marathon at all," Moriarty reportedly said. "I don’t know if those plans were affected by what has recently happened or if that was always the plan or whatever. But it is considered a fairly unusual move for a game of this high profile."

https://www.thegamer.com/marathon-bungie-sony-playstation-marketing-canceled-live-service-game/

It won’t bomb like Concord. It will fail though. It will be less like Concord and more like Lawbreakers, Anthem, Suicide Squad, Skull and Bones, etc.

Hideous (and stolen) art style, bad design, meh gameplay loop = turd

The only positive thing I could say about Marathon was the gunplay was solid and sound design was impeccable. I would compliment the interior designs, but idk if I can do that lol

The problem is that the game doesn’t have any sort of “it” factor that will get you hooked and favor it over the competition. It’s not even a content issue. Adding more heroes (runners), maps, etc won’t solve the games issues. The game truly felt like an early work in progress rather than a game that was releasing in a matter of several months, and I wouldn’t be surprised if September was the release date for upper management to try to save their skin.

Yes, there’s an extremely high likelihood the game will fail. Not Concord level. It will most likely have a decent audience when it launches, but unless there’s massive rework of much of the game, it will lose players very quickly.

Didn't knew much about this game, but at the internet, I see most people bashing the gameplay trailers.

So, probably yeah. Same thing happened to Foamstars and Concord, and we all know what happened to them.

To be fair, I don't think Fairgames reception so far should be an indictment of the game. Playtests exist to figure out what's working and what isn't. Negative feedback is a good thing, that is if they use it to improve upon the experience. And besides, this wasn't a public showcasing either.

Hard to say it's a certified failure, but its current trajectory is not looking good. Now there are rumors of canceled marketing plans. This may mean, Sony will cancel Marathon or delay it. 

Yes.