Oof well… I don’t know if Sony will learn from this, but I sure hope something changes soon. This live service push really hasn’t worked out for them at all besides HD2.

Bungie should have folded after Halo 3, and the best talent should have gone on to form a new, smaller studio. But like so many before them, they simply didn't know when to call it a day and leave on top. The Beatles were an example of knowing "when". Seinfeld is another. But there aren't many.

It's a gamble worth taking. Sony are in a very luxurious position of having a total monopoly over the console gaming market and that allows them to take risks that Xbox and Nintendo cannot afford to do. That's the benefit of having a monopoly, you can afford failed products. Did the failure of Windows Vista cause damage to MS? Nope because they already had a total monopoly so it's failure didn't matter.  

Not for a very long time, it seems.

I thought Halo Reach was fantastic.

But yeah, everything after that can get in the bin.

HD2, MLB and GT7 are all working out for them live service wise.

We'll have to see how willing Sony are to let Bungie turn around Marathon. It's doable, but Bungie will have to put in the hard work.

Next up is Fairgames, Horizon and Gummy Bears. 

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Yeah their live service push has definitely been more loss than win with the cancellations of Factions, Bluepoint's God war title, Studio Bend's project, Deviation games' project, Twisted Metal, London Studios' project, and Insomanic's Spiderman The Great Web, Concord crashing and burning, Marathon not doing so well, and Fairgame$ and Horizon Hunter's Gathering have been poorly received on reveal and looking like they too might flop.

Marathon will be fine for years to come. The real question is whether it makes more money than it costs to support, and Marathon was designed in a way that creating content would be quick and cheap(in contrast to destiny). The character models are flat, smooth and clean; light on detail. The guns are blocky, flat and clean and have very little intricate detail. Interaction with the factions is all through almost visual novel like screens with the core art and animations reusable forever.

You can easily add new missions, guns, mods, implants etc. Modifying maps can go a long way, and creating new enemies in the artsyle is again not as time consuming. New maps miight be trickier with a small team size, especially endgame raid like levels on the Marathon.

Also, Paul Tassi is not a reliable source. He mostly just repeats things he reads on reddit. 

OK, the numbers are not great, so Marathon probably is not a big success. And live service games have a death penalty quickly applied if cost of running it exceeds revenue stream. And live service games can die in the first place, your single player game you can play even if the company hates how it turned out.

That said - I don't think an extraction shooter has crazy cost associated with it. Vigor for instance is still running, even though I doubt it has more than a few hundred players at a time. On Steam it sits at a 100 concurrent players. But that is enough to fill the sessions with players and seemingly enough to pay for running costs. A small dedicated fanbase can be enough for this.

Running at this level would be not a big win for Bungie, but it may be sustainable. There are certainly dedicated fans that might keep the lights on for years to come. Except Sony wants only big hits or nothing and pulls the plug.