Bungie's 'Marathon' Achieves 1.2 Million Sales, Faces Market Challenges

"...Marathon is a great game for uncs...."

"...We should be happy, and we are as long as we’re focused on the game we’re playing and not the industry that’s collapsing around it...."

"...But I can’t help but follow those numbers because they are a reminder of how brutal the video game industry is right now, where it might be headed, and how viable Marathon and games like it are in the future...."

"...People are making horny fan art of Marathon characters...."

"...One might naively assume that the basic math at Sony would be to see how much Marathon cost to develop and maintain, see how much money it’s making after launch, and to keep the party going as long as it’s turning a profit...."

"...The reality is probably a bit more cynical and complicated than that...."

"...Sony is a publicly traded company that wants to show quarter over quarter growth, and a modestly healthy profit that also happens to keep hundreds of game developers employed is not what shareholders are salivating over...."

"...Sony wants to do Fortnite numbers, which is a very tall order considering that even Fortnite isn’t doing Fortnite numbers anymore...."

"...Our friends at Remap Radio have spoken at length about why discussions about player numbers teach us little about games and are often toxic...."

"...Part of the reason that games like Concord and Highguard can crash and burn so quickly is that the numbers become a self-fulfilling prophecy...."

"...There’s skepticism about the game before it launches, and when it fails to go viral, people write it off because why would they invest their time in an online game with player numbers that signal imminent and unceremonious execution by its financial backers, which only leads to even lower player numbers...."

"...It also shifts the conversation entirely away from what the game is, what people like about it, and why, and to its business model, infecting players with the quarterly earnings report view of the world...."

"...Games and players become expressions and subjects of business models, and the part where we play games because we enjoy them are reduced to a curious byproduct of Sony’s Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization...."

"...Games from major publishers become either mega hits or are quickly slapped with the “dead game” label before they’re taken offline...."

"...What the game actually was is barely relevant...."

"...Everyone I’m playing Marathon with is aware of the player numbers anxiety but is responding to it in different ways...."

"...Most of us are doing armchair video game industry analysis, while others are actively trying to enjoy Marathon’s popularity while we can precisely because it may be fleeting and eventually unavailable to play...."

"...Some of us are buying in-game cosmetic items not because we want them that bad, but as a signal to Sony that there’s money to be made here...."

"...Adding to this player count anxiety is the fact that the video game industry appears to be going through what is increasingly looking like a proper crash...."

"...I don’t think we’ll ever have another near extinction event like the video game crash of 1983, where for a moment it didn’t seem like video games would even continue to be a thing, but a full one third of game developers in the U.S. were laid off last year, and the huge layoffs just keep on coming...."

"...The question of whether Marathon is a viable business for Sony naturally leads us to the question: What business does Sony even want to be in going forward?..."

"...Is it a business that’s in continuity with the games we grew up playing on the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, or will the market force it to chase something like Roblox or other free-to-play models?..."

"...Can this continuity even exist when a PlayStation 5 Pro now costs $899 and a PlayStation 6 will cost more?..."

"...Those are prices for 30 and 40 year-olds with disposable income, not the younger audiences game publishers need to be winning over now for their future business...."

"...Sony and other video game publishers are already losing them to different kinds of games and forms of entertainment...."

"...To answer Park’s rhetorical question for him, yes, Marathon is in fact an unc game, which explains both why I like it so much and why I’m worried about its future...."

"...Marathon could easily fit in that collage...."

"...It’s excellent, and, I worry, catering to a dwindling audience of uncs who are having a great time while the culture and business of video games is largely moving on and eventually leaving them behind...."