Marathon Delayed! Bungie Doomed? - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: Marathon Delayed! Bungie Doomed? Release Date: June 17, 2025

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1. Introduction to the Breaking News

The episode kicks off with Greg Miller and Snow Bike Mike announcing significant breaking news about Bungie's highly anticipated game, Marathon. The hosts express excitement and urgency as they delve straight into the latest developments without any delay.

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2. Bungie's Official Statement on Marathon's Delay

Tim Gettys provides a detailed breakdown of Bungie's official update regarding the delay of Marathon. Originally slated for a September 23rd release, Bungie has announced a postponement without specifying a new launch date. The company's statement emphasizes their commitment to refining the game based on player feedback from the recent Alpha playtest.

Tim Gettys [04:25]: "Thank you not only for your passionate feedback around the Marathon reveal and Alpha playtest, but also for your patience while we took the time to listen closely and chart our next steps..."

This delay is portrayed as a strategic move to enhance the game's core elements, including survival mechanics, mystery, lore, endgame challenges, and Bungie's signature FPS combat.

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3. Analyzing Marathon's Current State

Andy Cortez shares his firsthand experience with the Marathon Alpha, highlighting both the game's potential and its shortcomings. He notes that while the game initially felt engaging, repeated failures during gameplay sessions revealed deeper issues:

Andy Cortez [06:47]: "I still found it fun, but I could absolutely see all of the drawbacks and negatives that the hardcore extraction shooter fan felt."

The consensus among the hosts is that Marathon struggles to balance appeal between hardcore extraction shooters and casual gamers, ultimately failing to satisfy either group adequately.

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4. Internal Challenges and Scandal at Bungie

The discussion shifts to internal morale at Bungie, exacerbated by a recent scandal involving the unauthorized use of artist Fern Anti Real Hook's work in Marathon's development. Greg Miller references an article from GamesRadar+ that details the low morale and uncertainty among Bungie staff.

Greg Miller [13:01]: "Morale at Bungie reportedly at an all-time low as the iconic FPS dev investigates stolen assets in Marathon..."

The scandal has led to significant internal strife, with legal investigations underway and uncertainty surrounding the game's completion and Bungie's future.

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5. Comparing Marathon's Situation to Industry Failures

The hosts draw parallels between Marathon's predicament and other high-profile game failures such as Suicide Squad and Concord. They discuss how poor reception during reveals and subsequent delays often lead to diminished confidence and support from both players and stakeholders.

Andy Cortez [09:06]: "I always thought that it was just a weird genre to be in anyway. This was, you know, it was hard for me not to say every sentence..."

The comparison underscores the challenges Bungie faces in salvaging Marathon and maintaining its reputation amidst mounting issues.

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6. Sony's Live Service Strategy and Its Impact on Bungie

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around Sony's approach to live service games and how it has affected Bungie. The hosts criticize Sony's broad strategy, suggesting that Bungie's struggles are symptomatic of larger systemic issues within PlayStation Studios.

Tim Gettys [17:32]: "And unfortunately, it just combines to a place of. Is Bungie doomed? Doomed to be fully put under PlayStation and not have any autonomy?"

They argue that Sony's aggressive push into live services without adequately understanding the target audience has led to multiple unsuccessful titles, further complicating Bungie's efforts with Marathon.

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7. Community Reaction and Super Chats Highlights

Throughout the episode, the hosts reference viewer interactions and super chats that echo their concerns about Bungie's direction. Notable sentiments include:

• Street Shadow [41:15]: "I will say the Alpha did work because they're delaying the game based on the feedback. Alphas are not only for hyping the game..."
• Deja Q: "I can't see this delay not having layoffs follow it. Leadership needs to change for Bungie to survive."

These community voices reinforce the narrative that Bungie's current strategies might be unsustainable.

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8. Future Outlook for Bungie and Marathon

The consensus among the hosts is bleak, with Greg Miller and Snow Bike Mike asserting that Bungie is likely facing imminent downfall. They speculate on possible outcomes, including Bungie being absorbed into PlayStation Studios or undergoing massive layoffs.

Greg Miller [62:01]: "Yeah. And can I inject one super chat to this conversation because it's right where we're at. It's piggybacking off of something Tim said. Right. This is Street Shadow who Super chat. It said Tim. I will say the Alpha did work because they're delaying the game based on the feedback."

Moreover, they lament the loss of Bungie's autonomy and express skepticism about the survival of other unsuccessful live service titles under Sony's umbrella.

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9. Broader Implications for the Video Game Industry

Closing the discussion, the hosts reflect on broader industry trends, such as the saturation of certain game genres and the difficulty of breaking through in a crowded market. They emphasize the importance of understanding player bases and maintaining quality over chasing market trends.

Snow Bike Mike [56:54]: "And so, my portfolio over here is already crushing it. It is eating Nintendo and Xboxes for Lunch, Right. They're doing it. But I needed more. I needed that Fortnite moneymaker. And you did the right move getting Bungie."

They caution against the pitfalls of overexpansion and the relentless pursuit of live service models without clear audience alignment.

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10. Conclusion: The Uncertain Future of Marathon and Bungie

The episode concludes on a somber note, with the hosts expressing doubt about Marathon's ability to recover from its current challenges and skepticism about Bungie's future in the gaming industry. They highlight the significant layoffs and internal issues as indicators of deeper problems within the studio.

Greg Miller [62:01]: "Yes. As I. It's not. Bungie is doomed. As they are laying off an additional 65% of their workforce while they focus on supporting PlayStation efforts and work on their own idea..."

The discussion serves as a cautionary tale about the complexities of game development, the impact of community feedback, and the challenges of navigating corporate strategies in the ever-evolving landscape of the video game industry.

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Notable Quotes:

• Greg Miller [04:08]: "You're the rootin tootin three point shootin' head shotin' son of a gun out there on Twitch."
• Andy Cortez [06:51]: "This isn't, you know, this isn't a multiplayer game with balancing issues. The maps were too similar."
• Tim Gettys [17:32]: "Is Bungie doomed? Doomed to be fully put under PlayStation and not have any autonomy?"

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Kinda Funny Gamescast provides an in-depth analysis of Bungie's challenges with Marathon, shedding light on internal struggles, community backlash, and broader industry implications. The hosts offer a critical perspective on the sustainability of live service models and the importance of aligning game development with player expectations.

Transcript

[Greg Miller]

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny games cast for Tuesday, June 17, 2025. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller alongside the master of hype, Snow bike Mike.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Greg. Thanks for getting me off the desk and getting me over to this desk.

[Greg Miller]

We got some breaking news, ladies, gentlemen, enbies. We got to jump right on it. Of course he's Forbes 30 under 30, aka the second best baby blues in San Francisco. Aka Game Showdown season three second place at Tim Gettys.

[Tim Gettys]

Let's him host.

[Greg Miller]

And of course he's rolling them shoulders. This is what it's like when you see Michael Jordan coming off the bench. He's taking off the. He's the Hispanic heart throb Texas street Latino. He's clicking heads and ripping them to shreds. The globetrotting head shot and three point shooting. Rootin Tootin Nitro rifle from Twitch tv.

[Andy Cortez]

Andy Cortez man, Alan Parson's project. Really rocking that song.

[Greg Miller]

Did I do that?

[Andy Cortez]

It may have been the only song they wrote, I believe.

[Greg Miller]

Wow.

[Tim Gettys]

I mean why after you do that, like there's no going up or down.

[Andy Cortez]

It was just, it was a commission from Michael Jordan.

[Greg Miller]

It was that thing where after the joker came out and they did the celebration bull song.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, right, right.

[Greg Miller]

And everybody's like, why are they using that? That song was done by a pedophile. I'm like, I don't know anything about Chicago Bulls music anymore and I will not engage in this discussion. I don't know what's happening. Don't take away that 90, that 90s, you know what I mean? Monsters out there. Of course, like I said, there is breaking news about Bungie, about Marathon, that game Daily tiptoed in and we said, you know what, we make the rules here. Kinda Funny. We can pivot, we can be nimble. Let's go for it. So this is the Kinda Funny gamescast. Each and every weekday on a variety of platforms, we run you through the biggest topics in video games that we need to talk about. They could be reviews, previews or breaking news. It'll always be covered here live on Twitch TV. Kindafunnygames, YouTube.com kinda funnygames and of course podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do at Kinda funny as an 11 person small business, all about live talk shows, make sure you pick up that kinda funny membership. YouTube.com kindafunnygames patreon.com kindafunny Apple or Spotify. You give us $10 a month, we give you 80 episodes of content ad free and 4 hours of exclusive podcasting each and every day in 1520 minute chunks from me, Greg Miller, in a series we call Greg Way. Most importantly, you get the show with no ads but no big deal. If you got no money to toss our way, you can get it for free. Twitch TV, kinda funny games. YouTube.com kindafunnygames Apple Spotify, every other podcast service. If you're watching live like I see Matthew Red Hudson 8 Lucid Dream, of course fro Frolicious 2595. I fucking got it Andy.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay, thank you to meta Dandy for first time I said I got it Andy with Prime.

[Greg Miller]

Go over to YouTube.com kindafunnygames and answer the super chat question. Is Bungie cooked? I want to know if you think they got guys in the tank. Do you care about Marathon? Does that game have a ch. Oh, we have a lot to cover and we will get all into it momentarily. Of course, like I said, you already got Games Daily, which was supposed to be a pretty easy episode about, hey, look at some of these Xbox things and the OS's and the handheld stuff. And then I was like, well now hold on a second. They just put out a video saying they're partnering over here with AMD for next gen consoles. Wait, what does that mean? Well, okay, well, at least we got through that all of a sudden. Marathons. Lot of stuff going on and we couldn't do it without your support. Thank you. You can get that Games Daily. Like I said. YouTube.com kindafunnygamespodcastservices after the gamescast, you're getting a sponsored Nvidia FBC Firebreak Break stream. That's what they wrote. Followed by Jak and Daxter with Barrett and Blessing. If you're a kinda funny member, today's Greg way is 20 plus minutes on why you shouldn't have a kid unless you like that. I put the dot, dot, dot that and of course later today is the kind of funny happy hour for our $25 and above supporters on Patreon. Do kind of funny. Of course you get to call in, talk to us for a private podcast.

[Snow Bike Mike]

It's great.

[Andy Cortez]

This is one of those days.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Dude.

[Greg Miller]

Hey man, I ran off the hedge too.

[Andy Cortez]

All right, that's good.

[Greg Miller]

I'm Bill Cartwright, man in the middle over here.

[Andy Cortez]

Love it.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney Twining. Today we're brought to you by Shady Rays, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be the topic of the show. Timothy?

[Tim Gettys]

Yes.

[Greg Miller]

Did you think you were going to get through Games Daily with just one breaking news segment?

[Tim Gettys]

No. Is there more?

[Greg Miller]

No.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Okay.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that was crazy. Yeah, that was. That was a lot. And obviously this news. It was weird because I feel like we've talked about this sometime in the last week about Marathon status and there was question of like, did it already get delayed officially, did it not? Like, where are we at?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

And not being at the state of play, all that stuff. Right. So now. Okay, cool. Officially getting delayed. But all they're saying is it's delayed out of the September 23rd date they had. We don't know when it's coming out. So that is the. The question of the hour for all of us to answer. And is this good news? Is this bad news? I have thoughts. You want to know my thoughts real quick?

[Snow Bike Mike]

He's got thoughts.

[Greg Miller]

No, I want to get through the update. Then I want. I want to read the update because it is breaking news. Maybe people are seeing this for the first time. The update from Bungie.net reads. Thank you not only for your passionate feedback around the Marathon reveal and Alpha playtest, but also for your patience while we took the time to listen closely and chart our next steps through every comment and real time conversation on social media and discord. Your voice has been strong and clear. We've taken this to heart and we know we need more time to craft Marathon into the game that truly reflects your passion. After much discussion within our dev team, we've made the decision to delay the September 23rd release. The Alpha test created an opportunity for us to calibrate and focus the game on what will make it uniquely compelling. Survival under pressure, mystery and lore around every corner, Raid like endgame challenges and Bungie's genre defining FPS combat, we're using this time to empower the team to create the intense, high stakes experience that a title like Marathon is built around. This means deepening the relationship between the developers and the game's most important voices, our players. Over the next few months, we'll continue closed testing, including participants in the Alpha to deploy game updates and test new features as they come online. You'll hear from us again later this fall when we can share the progress we've made alongside the game's new release date. Thank you again for your patience and much more importantly, your passion. Your continued feedback will help us make Marathon the incredible gaming experience we all know it can be. Andy Cortez Hey Greg, you're the rootin tootin three point shootin' head shotin son of a gun out there on Twitch. You've played the marathon Alpha.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

What did you think? And then what do you read between the lines here?

[Andy Cortez]

It was clear that this thing is a ways off. Especially, you know, after playing the Arc Raiders beta and seeing just how much more developed that was, seeing how much more content filled that, that felt.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I still found it fun, but I could absolutely see all of the drawbacks and negatives that the hardcore extraction shooter fan felt. When you know it, it's always caught in those. It was always caught in a weird area of too casual for the hardcore fans.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And too hardcore of a genre for casual fans. And trying to please everybody was going to please nobody, you know.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I always thought that it was just a weird genre to be in anyway. This was, you know, it was hard for me not to say every sentence. Now this isn't the game that I would want them to make or this isn't. Yeah, it sucks. Right? It was always like the reality of man. This would be, this would be one of the coolest settings to exist in as a single player character who creates their own shell and get, you know, gets to discover and explore this world but trapped in a multiplayer like experience where me, me and Mike and Nick had a really fun day with it the first day. And then the next day me and Mike were like, let's continue that fun. And we streamed it and legitimately died about seven times in a row in about like a 45 minute span. And it was like, whoa, this is a complete 180 to how we were feeling yesterday. I'm not surprised by this, especially after those leaks that were happening about the, the marketing plans being canceled for, you know, and not seeing at the state of play was also kind of damaging the coal mine. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's a bummer. I don't, I'm worried like I'm worried about Bungie.

[Greg Miller]

Oh yeah, we'll get into that.

[Andy Cortez]

Because this isn't, you know, this isn't just something that you can tune and tweak. What people want is something that would take three, four years to develop or whatever. And I just don't, I don't know.

[Greg Miller]

Before we get too far into the weeds on Bungie, because I do want to bring in a number of different articles and I think Paul Tassey has some salient points in his. Michael? Yeah, Greg, I of course want to know what your thoughts on the Alpha were If you were surprised by this information. But I also know so many people are tuning in because of the news. What is Marathon?

[Snow Bike Mike]

Marathon is an extraction shooter coming from the, of course famous and well known development team of Bungie. I think a lot of people know Bungie from the early Halo days and most importantly, probably their MMO experience with Destiny. So they're looking at a really acclaimed developer name going, okay, what's that new next thing? As Destiny 2 continues to be what Destiny 2 is, while also starting to slowly end and maybe ramp up for something different later on. But this is their next big game and a lot of people were excited. Of course, Marathon is also a title from way back in the day that people, the old heads will tell you, oh, I remember this. The new kids will say, I don't know even what you're talking about, Gary. It's kind of, It's a new title to a lot of us here. And they chose an extraction shooter, right? Which is a small, kind of interesting genre within the first person shooter genre. So for me, I came out of it actually really enjoying Marathon on day one. Similar to what Andy said, it was more up my alley with more clashing and team engagements that felt similar to a battle royale style of intensity and gameplay cycles. But it was lacking in the extraction shooter moment to moment gameplay, which is what we saw when they took a big right jab, I think, for Mark Raiders. Right. Both of these games had betas and alphas within the two same weeks. And you could see the momentum from the idea of Bungie coming out with a new game. Oh, it's an extraction shooter. Let's try this to. Oh, I'd much rather play this Arc Raiders game. This game isn't good. It's kind of like, you know, when Woody and Buzz met each other and Andy dropped poor Woody over there. That's how this went. And so, yeah, I think the writing was on the wall. You could tell the audience feedback to Bungie, of course, the stolen assets and the reused arts as Andy and I covered in games daily. That was just a lot of like, this isn't quite right. This isn't setting up well for a, hey, here's the date. Okay, we'll see you in September. It felt like, hey, we need to hit the brakes on this fast. So for me, I think this is the right call. Now you start to play the game, Greg, right at the end. We have our creators on October 30th. No, let me double check that. Our Creators comes out October 30th. We have GTA in May. The world shuts down in May, gaming wise. So you have a tight window here to say where do we call our shot? Do we hit this or do we wait past May and get away from Grand Theft Auto and so really going to come down to Sony and Bungie, how much money do you have? How much can we put into this? How much can we wait? Because for me, I think at this point you're waiting past May, Greg. And I know that's a crazy thing to say, but like you are getting out of the way of our creators at the end of October, which is clearly already eaten your lunch and I am not trying to position myself and hey, let's drop on February and have a month to two months of excitement and then just dive bomb die because of Grand Theft Auto.

[Andy Cortez]

It's wild to think that the game was already struggling. The game was already not in the best place, especially with the beta kind of being really, really botched in a weird way where invites people weren't being invited. And you're looking at even though you could play this beta on multiple consoles, concurrent Steam numbers were hitting triple digits and it's like, hey, we can let more people in. There's a lot of people waiting to get into this, like allow this to happen, right? And momentum was already not on their side. And then the stolen art happened and it's like holy shit. Like you couldn't have asked for a worst thing to happen to a game that already felt floundering and already felt like it was missing its identity and purpose.

[Greg Miller]

Let me bring in an article because we keep mentioning the stolen art. I was going to get to a little bit later, but I want to bring that up so you have a clear picture if you're not up on that news. All right, we're going to go to GamesRadar plus, where Khan Sarin wrote Morale at Bungie reportedly at an all time low as the iconic FPS dev investigates stolen assets in Marathon, the vibes have never been worse. End quote. Morale at Bungie, the iconic first person studio behind Destiny and the original Halo games, is reportedly at an all time low, with some employees unsure about whether their upcoming Marathon reboot can meet its September release date, obviously dated now, in case the scandal hasn't reached you yet, earlier this week, futuristic indie artist Fern Anti Real Hook accused the studio of using her 2017 art portfolio as inspiration for Parentheses, to put it mildly, for Marathon, without permission or payment. She also posted side by side screenshots of her own artwork next to Marathon's Alpha test with very similar iconography, patterns, fonts and sometimes even words appearing in both. Bungie later admitted that a former artist at the studio had mistakenly quote included these in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in game end quote instead. It was currently investigating a concern regarding unauthorized use of artist's details. Unauthorized use of Artist decals A new Forbes report citing comments from former and current Bungie staff now gives some insight into what's happening inside the studio. Morale is said to be in a free fall and the vibes have never been worse. Higher ups haven't said anything about a delay potentially hitting marathon, but many are uncertain about if the shooter can turn around its controversial perception in time for launch just a few months away. Game director Joe Ziggler even said the studio was still scrubbing out our assets to make sure all were respectful to the situation, which obviously sounds like a pretty hefty undertaking for now. Bungie's legal team and parent company Sony are purportedly also investigating the situation, though the fact the studio neglected to show gameplay footage in this week's live stream, of course State of Play Discussing the alpha maybe says enough.

[Andy Cortez]

No, the state of the the live stream they were talking about was the they they had like their own.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, they have their own alpha.

[Andy Cortez]

And so that day was a very like oh man, we got the elephant in the room is all of our shit was stolen and every comment in the Twitch chat was art raiders and it was just like bad vibes all around.

[Greg Miller]

So I want to go to Tim, but I want to piggyback off something you said Andy, that so many people this isn't the game they wanted. It needs to be from people would love a ground up Guitar Hero Arrow super chatted just like you can on YouTube.com kind of funny games it says keeping extraction focus is only delaying the same outcome IMO needs a ground up refresh with diverse multiplayer suite and ideally a nostalgic solo campaign. Tim, I think this comes back to you where you were at the top of the show, where you wanted to go a bit big picture with the Tim Gettys take.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's tough. There's a lot of layers to it. I think that the starting place is I don't think that today's news is bad news. I don't know that it's good news, but I don't think it's bad. I think this is the best possible thing they can do, which is not release on September 23rd. That is way too soon. It feels like they're not going to have anything answered that we need them to at this point by then. But the question then becomes, what is the answer? What is the way to change the fact that this is now the third time that we've had a headline on one of our shows that implies Bungie's fucking up and that we don't know if they can fix it in the same type of way we talk about Ubisoft and talk about some of these companies that are clearly like making decisions that aren't vibing with the general gaming audience or the gaming audience of people like us that talk about the business of games. And I think from that perspective, when you're looking at this game, Mike said it so well of what Marathon is and what it is going to need to be to a new generation of people. And all right, cool. PlayStation had Helldivers last year. They had this mega win on this side of gaming to an extent. They also had Concord, which we understand was maybe the biggest failure in video game history. Yeah, like that is going to be something that we talk about forever and to this day is unbelievable to me. I can't believe they actually pulled that game as quickly as they did. So to look here, it's like, how do you solve this? Because we all sat and we looked at Suicide Squad and we looked at Concord and going into it, we're all like, I don't know, I don't know. And it's not just a gut feeling. It's like, I don't know. Because xyz. And here we are now saying I don't know. And we have reasons why. And unfortunately it's an entire Alphabet from A to Z with this one.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

And I look at it and Andy's saying that he thinks that giving this game more time, giving it the more modes and all of that. Mike was backing this up too. Like there's something here. And I believe that. I totally do. I think that yes, like kind of restart this game, there is potential for marathon, a bungee marathon that is not just on PlayStation 5, but it's also on PC and also on Xbox. And it is crossplay that can succeed for sure. But at this point, I don't think that's the move. I don't think that that's possible is the answer. Figuring out a new strategy. Financially, it's free to play. They come up with microtransactions somehow they. They try their best to just make money from what they have, because this is what they have. The reality is they're probably going to have to go through legal battles with the artist. And whether legal battles just means here's some hush money. Like they're actively going to lose even more money for this. Who knows what that looks like in the grand scheme of things? But that's all just bad vibes, bad news. And I think it just combines to a place of. Is Bungie doomed? Doomed to be fully put under PlayStation and not have any autonomy? Yes, doomed as a company. I'm not so sure about that. Is Marathon doomed?

[Greg Miller]

Absolutely.

[Tim Gettys]

I think that they need to come up with. With. With some way to save this. And it's looking very doubtful in my opinion.

[Greg Miller]

I think. Yeah, I, you know, I have so much more to dive into and go into this. But I think this is exact. I mean, this is what's happening with Fair Games and Haven Studios, I believe. Except they just didn't. They were. They're further down their timeline on when they were supposed to announce and show more stuff. I think you're seeing right here. PlayStation does not want another concord period. I think they're going to end up killing this in the crib as well. And I think exactly what you're saying, Tim. It's going to be cool. We're killing Marathon and Bungees, being absorbed into PlayStation Studios and going to, you know, whoever's still there, whatever's still going on. What, there's going to be layoffs? I'm sure all these other things.

[Andy Cortez]

There's layoffs when things are going well, right?

[Greg Miller]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Andy Cortez]

Like when. When Destiny to the final shape comes out and it's great review and then like it. It's insane that that's how we just kind of expect that and things will likely just get worse. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

In the super chats, Sadistic Serif says if they release this game, Bungie will get closed. Killian C says, I don't have confidence in Bungie existing in its current state. They'll become a PlayStation stud. I could honestly see Marathon getting canceled. Interesting. Of course, there's still so much happening while we're live. Paul Tassi has tweeted after he put up the news, most of Bungie found out about the Marathon delay right now, indicating that this tweet is actually. What? Because he quote, tweeted the initial tweet indicating that that's what's going on and how Bungie as a studio is being informed that your game is officially delayed. I have a section here that this is all on the heels of four fucking days ago. We go to Paul Tassi at Forbes, Sony tout's Strong Marathon Engagement Confirms Release Window the future of Marathon over the last month or so feels rather unsteady, but in a new SIE presentation, Sony is reinforcing that it's an important game in its lineup and projecting confidence. Sony's Herman Hulse took some time during his overview of PlayStation's offerings to single Marathon out as, quote, an innovative and bold take on the extraction shooter genre. End quote. This was joined by a slide that under the banner Fiscal. I'm sorry, yeah, fiscal year 25 focus, which said that there is, quote, strong early engagement for Bungie's bold new Innovative Bungie's bold and innovative new title. End quote. For starters, we're back to Paul, of course. At least the presentation reinforces a window of Marathon fiscal year 2025 in a time that most players believe it will be delayed out of its current 9-23-25 release date. Fiscal year 25 ends March 2026. So it would not be something huge like a year delay. Even six months is pushing it. So if there is one, it would not be all that long and you would wonder what might be able changed or fixed in that time. This leads to the next aspect of this this supposed strong engagement. End quote. Sure, there's been strong engagement, but that consists of a lot of negativity about the game's reveal, then an overwhelming sense that the closed alpha was underwhelming, then an industry wide scandal where it all revealed where it was revealed that plagiarized art had made it through the game's pipeline over a number of years and had ended up in the game itself. So yes, there was quote unquote engagement. Either Sony is completely divorced from the online conversation surrounding Marathon, or they see where things are headed and feel forced to project strength. Regardless, saying nothing about Marathon or waffling on it here would do nothing to help them or the game. So of course, yes, you say you believe in the game, even if you're dancing around what's actually happening by bragging about engagement. But internally, even Bungie is extremely concerned about where things are and where things are going from here. The chart of Sony's live service prospects is bleak. There's no real getting around that it considers its eternal baseball game, the show a live service. Destiny 2 has been bleeding players and is now entering a very risky new era that seems unlikely to return the game to its glory days. Marathon is on the edge of oblivion at this point. It's hilarious. They're even saying Fair Games is actually still coming out. The unequivocal bright spot here is Helldivers 2, which has been true since it launched, but its developer, Arrowhead, will not be working with Sony for its next game. Over the course of the past two months, I've arrived at the conclusion that Marathon is just not going to work. The vibes are awful. The problems with the game are mostly etched in stone, and now we have an art theft scandal on top of that. I do expect a delay to be announced, but it won't be lengthy. And I do not believe this is going to release. To be a release that both Sony and Bungie need. Whatever they're saying in their slideshow, I echo all of that, right? And again, I come back to the idea of, like, will they actually release this? I think you ate so much shit with Concord, where, like, it was out, what, two weeks? When do you pull up stakes here and go, all right, the art thing and this thing and that thing, and it's just, this isn't worth it.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Again, Mike, let me tell you what you do.

[Greg Miller]

Let me tell you.

[Snow Bike Mike]

You release in March, and guess what? GTA releases in May. We just go out with a whimper. The gamers will forget about it. They will move on from your game, and we can just slowly kill that by the end of summer into the next year. I think if you have to release this, that's the play that they will do. They will look at February or March. They will drop this. Me and Andy have played hundreds of these multiplayer games that come onto Steam. They are there for about two weeks to a month, and then you never talk about them in six months from now. And so a Bungee title, of course, is much bigger than that. But if you wanted to do this, like, quietly, without doing the Concord path of we're killing this in front of the public and everybody, you put this out in March, you let that ride for two months, the players will slowly get quiet, and then, boom, GTA will come over. Nobody will speak about this game again, and it will be like, as if nothing ever happens.

[Tim Gettys]

So that all happens. Then what happens to Bungie?

[Snow Bike Mike]

Bungie has one goal. They should have stuck with the TLC route. Don't go chase some waterfalls. Stick to the lakes and the rivers that you used to. I've said this many of times. Okay, well said.

[Greg Miller]

Well, Destiny's acknowledging that was great.

[Snow Bike Mike]

A lot of people, A lot of people come after me. And Paul Tassey says it, well, like, Destiny 2 has had its time in the sun and it's slowly ramping down. You can be a hardcore Destiny fan And say, mike, it's still great, there's still content being made, but it will never be what it was. Right. We are at the trail end of Destiny. It is time for that studio to focus up and just make a Destiny 3. And unfortunately, that's where they're at. Destiny is a mega hit. It's an awesome MMO that people love. It's a name and a brand that people will flock to. Your studio now becomes the Destiny Studio. For the next 10 years, you are focused on Destiny, the people the Destiny.

[Greg Miller]

Exists or Destiny 3.

[Snow Bike Mike]

You will make Destiny 3. You will start to slowly make a little more Destiny 2 content into Destiny 3. That's how it should have gone. That's how it was supposed to be. And so now, similar to Halo Studios, you will look at that staff and say, you either love and breathe Destiny or you're going to find a new place to go work. But there are hundreds of people that will come and say, I want to be part of Destiny. I want to make Destiny awesome for the future. And that's what they should have been doing from this time. But we've talked about it many of times. A lot of CEOs, a lot of execs saw the trend of Battle Royale, saw Fortnite and said, there's money, we want more of that. Let's start chasing trends. And then there was this big rise up of people going, battle Royale, this Battle Royale that. I don't want Battle Royales anymore. There's too many. And now people are saying, well, what else could we give them? Oh, extraction shooters. And now all of a sudden we've seen everybody and their mother say, we want to make an Extraction shooter. Without probably knowing the extraction shooter audience is tiny. And the idea of you making the one main mainstay extraction shooter game is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Good luck with that. And they all chase this. And they said, Sony probably told Bungie or Bungie said that. And it was like, you should have just stuck to where you should have been. And that was making Destiny content and getting into Destiny 3. I love the idea of Destiny being so big or getting off the purchase, being able to make a second project, try something different. Yeah, but the Extraction shooter wasn't it. And we all know that 100.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, a lot of it is execs kind of seeing, you know, the, the battle or the Battle Royale genre. We're not going to be able to penetrate this genre, but we see a lot of opportunity here and we see a lot of opportunity here and Extraction Shooter happens to be. Well, Tarkov is killing it. We can be the like we saw a lot of people in the chat and a lot of people in comments saying, well, they can be the fortnite of an attraction. That's just that that's not a thing, man. Like it. Yeah, it really isn't.

[Snow Bike Mike]

And the issue is, as well as we talk about what can be marathon, what can you change that to? Right? We have so little time if we're gonna keep that work by March.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Snow Bike Mike]

You can't just change the foundation of this game. It will always kind of be built on this Extraction Shooter. So we're not getting a solo campaign out of this. We are not getting different game modes. And already you can't go to a team arena shooter because we already have a thousands of those. Right. This hasn't broken out to be. Oh, it's incredible. And so my issue is, is this is a game that you can't really change from a type A game all the way to a type C game out of nowhere in six months. And so that's why you probably you should drop this in February. We all play it for a month. People who love it will ride with it. The people who complain about it, guess what? In May GTA will come. We'll never speak of this game again. We'll forget about it.

[Greg Miller]

I want to talk about this in comparison to Suicide Squad. But first I need to remind you that we are Kind of funny each and every day. We're doing a bunch of live talk shows for your viewing pleasure on twitch tv. Kind of funny games and YouTube.com kinda funny games later on podcast services around the globe. No matter where you get the show, we'd really appreciate it if you consider picking up a Kinda Funny membership. Of course, $10 a month supports our 11 person independent team and gets you all of our shows. That's more than 80 shirts a month ad free. And of course you get a daily dose of me in a 15 to 20 minute podcast we call Greg Way. But right now you're not using your benefits. So here's a word from our sponsors.

[Tim Gettys]

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[Greg Miller]

We're back. Obviously we've talked a lot about people playing the Alpha, having this feedback. It's too far gone. You can't change it. This reminds me of Suicide Squad when Suicide Squad had that PlayStation showcase or, you know, state of play. We're all like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we all watched like, oh shit, this doesn't look good at all. And that was universally the feedback. Then they were like, we're delaying. And it was like, well, why? What are you gonna do? You really can't change. Like, this is done, the game's done. This is what it is, what it's going to be, right, Andy, for somebody who played both of those games, is marathon as far gone as Suicide Squad was? Or is it just the wrong genre, wrong time?

[Andy Cortez]

Well, I mean, I, I think that they're both in similar spots where it's, hey, the, the company that we love is making the thing that I don't want to be a part of. Like, it's. It. It'd be similar to, Holy, the new Rockstar game is coming out. Let's see this big reveal. It's a cozy life sim. I mean, that could be cool, but like, that's not what I want from Rockstar, you know, so they're in very similar situations and I don't know if they have the, the name or the power to push past those, those blocks, you know, I just don't think that they have that.

[Greg Miller]

Interesting. Mike, do you agree?

[Snow Bike Mike]

Yeah, I agree with that. I think just on the flip side, I think this one speaks a little bit more to the. I mean, it's a different audience, right? Like this one, I want to say, speaks to more of the casual audience. Just because the Fortnite is just running around like first person shooters are so hot. So I think more people will Jump onto this and give it a little more love and time than they did Suicide Squad. But it will be the exact same thing as a Suicide Squad of this releases. It will get a month of coverage. They will get a month of people buying it, people refunding it, people jumping in and out of it. And it's just going to kind of come and go. So, yeah, it's in the exact same spot. This one. I just feel like I guess maybe I live and breathe first person shooters a lot more that there are. There's a higher chance of people playing this for a weekend and then never playing it again, as opposed to Suicide Squad. That very much felt like, no, you know, correct me if I was just.

[Greg Miller]

A fact of it. 3999 on Marathon is what they were saying they were charging.

[Tim Gettys]

They haven't announced the price. It will not be full price, but they haven't announced the price right now. Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, you guys talking about Suicide Squad I think is obviously very apt conversation in terms of, hey, there's this beloved studio. They're doing something that we are not interested in. The other thing to talk about is, you know, Concord, where it came out. And that's a different situation that there was. It's kind of an unknown quantity with that team. And it was more just like that was our first taste of what that could be. And all of us still looked at that like, I just don't know about this. And one of the bigger conversations around Concord and it failing was the, I think very poor way they rolled out marketing for that game. And in addition to the state of play and them overhyping weird things that we just knew we couldn't believe in like the weekly story bits and all that.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Don't do that. Yeah, yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

It raises more questions and more like I don't believe you vibes than anything else. But in addition to that, we all said they should have had a preview event. We look at Apex Legend, a game that didn't exist to the public. And then all of a sudden, the first time it's being talked about, it's, yo, we played it. It's awesome. I know you might think we don't need another battle royale. This one's freaking good. And that energy got people like, you know what? I free to play. I'm interested in this. Let's give it a shot. And then Apex for years did great, right? I feel like Concord didn't do that. And Marathon, they did the beta, but it didn't work. And I think that is almost the worst case scenario where it's like, all right, cool. So now it's been in the community's hands. It's not even just games media. It is like games media and community and the, the walkways. Eh, it was okay. Some people liked it, some people didn't. Some people's favorite thing was the art design and the art design was stolen. That there's just a lot of elements there. I do think that the plagiarism and the, the art stuff, like, I don't think that's the reason for the delay. I, I think people have been talking about like, maybe it's like, oh, they're taking time to like, no, I don't think so. I think that that is such a non factor to them. They're going to deal with it however they need to. Of like the exact things that are legit stolen, they'll get taken away the more. Oh, it's like their designs and I like their, their style.

[Greg Miller]

That's.

[Tim Gettys]

It's, you know, I think people are going, money will be exchanged and I think that'll be taken care of. But I don't think that has anything to do with.

[Greg Miller]

To go back to your Apex example in this Alpha and Concord, all this jazz, I think that's the big thing. When Apex showed up and caught everybody off guard and had the stuff. Marathon showed up and does not have the stuff. For me, it was when you guys did the marathon Alpha, then you played Arc Raiders or vice versa. And then it was, you guys are like, all right, let's play more Marathon. Nick was like, but I really want to play more Arc Raider. You know what I mean? Like, you went toe to toe with somebody and got clowned out of like, oh, this is the better thing. And in a world we're constantly talking about how little time everybody has, how little money everybody has. Like, if you're gonna come up and show up and can't beat your first.

[Tim Gettys]

Competitor and add on to that, I think another thing we have to bring up is Concord Hero shooter coming out, PlayStation console exclusive. And then guess what's coming out the same time, Andy Marvel Rivals. Here's this game that you could play anywhere, that is free to play. That is Marvel no ip. You hear all this stuff and not all of it. You hear the Marvel part. And that might be the most questionable thing. Well, turns out when you put the passion and care into it, it can work. And it's to this day working for them. But that was just another thing against oh man. Players played that game. And we're like, this is awesome. We all saw that trailer. This is one of the rare, kind of funny moments that we got to see a trailer for a game that we knew nothing about before everybody and we see this trailer and all of us were like, huh, that looks. When NetEase popped up.

[Andy Cortez]

We're all like, mobile game.

[Tim Gettys]

And then by the end of it, we're like, wait a minute. This could have the stuff. And then people played it. It had the stuff like, that's. You need that story. And for Marathon to not only have not that story, but the story that it has, that I think is a place you can't come back from. So I want to ask you guys, gameplay, let's say that they, they tweak things here and there to make it a little bit better for more people getting in. And you're not getting clowned out and like it. You're. You're feeling good about playing it because you liked the gameplay, right, Andy?

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, I mean, it's a bungee shooter. It feels good. But the, the. It's the whole genre itself. Right. Like, you could make a horror gore movie a bit funnier, but it's still a horror gore movie that, like, if that's not your jazz, you're not going to be into that. And I don't think that there's any tweaks you can do here. This isn't a, this isn't a multiplayer game with balancing issues.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Where you push some numbers up this way and make that tank stronger or whatever. For me, it's like the, what you have here is the Destiny and Bungie fan base that are going to be sort of the main people that are going to be excited about the next Destiny, Bungie or Bungie project. And so much about Destiny is player agency. It's. That's my guardian that I, I. That. That's my dude. I customize in the way I want. I have my shaders. The way I'm using that armor instead of this one, because I love the way that one looks. And it's, it's so much about that representation. That's my dude. And to come out with an extraction shooter, that is not the genre you necessarily want, but maybe I can customize my guy. Oh, it's just like I'm playing as. It's a hero extraction shooter, which is even worse of a thing that you would want because you're pushing away your fan base even more. Because if I want to play a character class with those abilities, I have to be that character. I don't want to be that character. And in the trailer that or in that eight minute sort of short that was done by the Love Death and Robots director we're seeing, you know, this, this shell, this like sentient like being or whatever customizing themselves with a. And obviously the game would have skins, the game would have things like that. But it's like you are having to play as Glitch, that girl with the spiky hair or as that guy who's always got the hood on or whatever. It's like you're taking away that player agency, which is another thing that your audience was probably going to want in a game like this.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I just think the as on top of that, Andy, the audience just doesn't want the PvP nature of this. We see so much of the casual audience now moving away of like I just want a PvE experience. I think that is why Helldivers did so well is you take the stress of Mike and his goons are going to come after you every waking moment and it's going to make a bad experience. Now you have the chill of like, I'm relaxed. And Destiny is built off of that of like I choose when to go into PvP. I don't have to be in this at all times. And when you play an extraction shooter, you make this kind of game. It is you are on your toes at all times and you're going to have a bad time. If we come after you and we choose to and that's what this game mode is going to be. Every time we see you, we will attack you. And for other people it's like, oh man, I want to just jump into this. I'm a casual.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Greg Miller. I've never played an extraction shooter. His first 20 experiences should never see another player because if he does, he's going to get run over to the point where it's like, well, he didn't extract any items. He didn't learn about the game mechanics. He has no idea what's happening.

[Tim Gettys]

Boom.

[Snow Bike Mike]

The PvE PvP genre is like you're making that bubble and you're taking it even smaller. And I think for an audience like Sony in particular Bungie, with what they've built off of Destiny, they're not looking for a die hard PvP experience right now.

[Tim Gettys]

So. So with that, right, we, we need community for this game. We talk about all the time with fighting games that are starting to thrive in a whole new way like we've never seen because they're being supported by the Developers in, in various forms, whether it's releases like quality releases, updates to those releases, fighting game tournaments and community opportunities like cross platform play for a lot of these things. Like a lot of efforts being put into that. When we started talking about these sub genres and sub genres of sub genres and then diagrams of everything of shooting games and the multiplayer modern experience. Like do you think that this being cross platform, is there a way that they can change the paid 40, whatever this ends up being and just make it free to play that makes this work well enough? Is that even possible?

[Snow Bike Mike]

A lot of these games in this genre are not free to play. So a lot of them are on the budget titles but still premium settling at that 30 to 40 range. So it's like you're in the market. That is where everybody is being free to play. I don't think tips the scales any more in this simply because you now know what you're getting into. Yes, you might try it and maybe they'll get a million more players when they can. You know my favorite game Pass? Hey, we got 30 million here. It's like okay, well a lot of people just click that to try it for a weekend. That's what you'll see there. They'll promote 2 million people played it but really only a million really want to stick in this. And so I don't think going free to play will change the route of what this is going to be.

[Andy Cortez]

In the same way that it wouldn't have helped Concord. Yeah, that, that we, we, we knew what Concord was. I still think it was a very good game that just came out around a time that everything is better and people are invested much more in those ecosystems and free to play will not help Concord. And I don't, I don't think free to play will drastically change this as well either because it's like the recipe is still what it is.

[Tim Gettys]

God, they're so fucked.

[Snow Bike Mike]

It is.

[Greg Miller]

And can I inject one super chat to this conversation because it's right where we're at. It's piggybacking off of something Tim said. Right. This is Street Shadow who Super chat. It said Tim. I will say the Alpha did work because they're delaying the game based on the feedback. Alphas are not only for hyping the game. Alpha proved the game needed more time. Concord didn't do that. Here's what I would disagree with on this is that to what we're talking about when and I really believe it's an if you ever see marathon again. It's not going to be radically changed. It's still going to be an extraction shooter and that's that. That's the core problem we're talking about is that it's a genre people don't necessarily want or that they're going to make an impact in. This strikes me as the Suicide Squad state of play where it's like we put it out there and oh fuck, you're all giving us feedback. We knew internally or maybe you, I mean Bungie must have known PlayStation was put like this does feel very in the way. Like, oh, get into the beta. That's two weeks before launch. Well that's fucking. That's not a beta, that's a demo. Right. This feels very similar to a degree.

[Andy Cortez]

Of like that's you stress testing servers.

[Greg Miller]

Let's put out. We're putting out the date and we're putting out this alpha in quotes, which again, for Alpha you'd be further along than that. But we're putting it out to see what the market in the world thinks of it. And I think Concord didn't do that because they would have gotten similar feedback, I assume. Right. And now they've gotten this feedback and it's like, okay, well you know what I mean with the Concorde example. But like now we're to the point of like, I don't think this is all right, we're taking you offline and back to the drawing board here to work on you as much as it is to hem. Haw lay off a bunch of people and kill it.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I mean we've talked about Concord a lot but like Concord also had a different beast of it was going into a dying genre, which is the team arena shooter that we just don't see a lot of love in right now. It's like that is a beloved style of gameplay when you think of Halos. Old school Call of Duties. We've seen Splitgate kind of break the mold with this. But like team arenas are not the hot stuff that it is right now that people think it is battle royales, it is hero shooters like Overwatch and Marvel rivals. Concord shows around that. Like that was not the right move. Remember X Defiant came out. Yeah. Another one of those team arena shooters that's like that's not where the audience is right now. And it's very tough to start a game five years before, like right now and say where is this audience going to be five years from now? It's just an ever evolving market. But when you think of trends and you think of old school staples, some of Those old school staples aren't as strong as they used to be.

[Tim Gettys]

It's really interesting that it does seem like we can all call this, like, why is it that we can look at all these games and know, oh, X Defiant. We put that in a category, but we looked at Marvel Rivals and we put that in a different category. Like, is it sheer quality of game? What's the X factor there? I think the one thing in this conversation that we got wrong, and I don't want to put everyone in that thing, was Helldivers 2, which is breakout success that I don't think any of us could have at all put in the category.

[Greg Miller]

I don't think anyone could have predicted exactly as a Hell Divan.

[Andy Cortez]

But like, you remember all the we. Where's PvP at for helldivers too? Do you remember how that lasted for about three weeks and people were like, oh, is it, is it done because they don't have pvp? Is this game gonna fail? It's like, no, it's. People want this experience.

[Greg Miller]

I arrowhead was very clear of, hey, no, that's not the game we make.

[Andy Cortez]

I'll go on the opposite side from Tinder. We're like, I, I don't think I could have called Marvel Rivals. I can look at a lot of these games and say, you know, I, I keep on making the comparison. It's Charles Barkley in the era of Michael Jordan. It's like you, I look at Marvel Rivals and I could have easily seen that failing along with all of the other very, very good, high quality games. Maybe the, the IP certainly gives it a big boost, but there's a lot of awesome quality games that if they were released 10 years ago, eight years ago, it would be a completely different story. But because they were releasing right now, it's just, you are surrounded by all this stuff and it's so hard to even make an impact.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Thousands of games a year, thousands of games a month are getting dropped here.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, just really, I'm with you there. Like, I'm not. To be clear, I'm not saying that we could have predicted Marvel Rivals would have been the success it is. That's way beyond what I'm saying.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay.

[Tim Gettys]

But I do think there's something about that initial reveal that we saw and the excitement there. And then when you guys played it, the energy y' all had, the fact that y' all wanted to go home and keep playing it together. It's like all it took was seeing the game and then playing the game and then all of a Sudden it's like, oh yeah. Whereas like a lot of these other ones you see you play, you're like. And it's like there's a lot of factors that go into it. But it is something where we look at Marathon and it's not in the Marvel Rivals category definitively.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Well, Marvel Rivals is also scratching an itch that needed to be scratched. That was different than a lot of these. Right. Overwatch has had its time in the sun. Overwatch 2 was disastrous on how they launched that and really brought that back up. And people love Overwatch. They want that kind of hero based team objective style gameplay and Marvel Rivals. You mix Marvel, the hype that we've rode for these past 10 years with the MCU plus the game is good. Now you're putting it in this kind of market that is Overwatch and fans like Andy who loves that style of gameplay. The old esports fans of Marvel of Overwatch and they needed something and that's what Marvel Rivals hit. Right. Marathon. Of course, Concord, they're all going for a different market. They are a different style of game. Marvel Rivals and Overwatch have their own style and that's what people were looking for at that time.

[Tim Gettys]

You guys correct me on this, Concord, where would you put that? Closer to a Halo or closer to Overwatch?

[Snow Bike Mike]

Halo.

[Andy Cortez]

Halo. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Snow Bike Mike]

It is a team arena. It's like it's heroes but it's team.

[Andy Cortez]

It's still a hero shooter, but it was largely gameplay. Kill confirmed or, or you know, I would say Marvel Rivals and Overwatch were. Are pretty much. They're. They're just the same game with replace characters and even moves that are all very, very similar. Yeah. Like you're pushing a payload. You're scratching that sort of same itch that you've been looking to get scratched. Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Mike, does any conversation here change if this is not Marathon, this is Destiny Extraction.

[Snow Bike Mike]

No. You're going into a market that is not welcoming, very welcoming to casuals. You are dropping a game. Even if was Destiny Extraction Shooter, you would still have the audience going, ooh, you're not as good as you need to be. Right. Arc Raiders proved that like there is a small market for this that people will get excited for and kind of drop what they're doing and play for a weekend to a week, maybe more. We'll see on October 30th how long that Arc Raiders love really lasts. I'm still very hesitant on that of like I think it's going to get some good love but I don't Think we'll be talking about that in 2026, two months afterwards. Right. And so you're going into a market that is like, this is already very hard to crack. This game wasn't that good. Right? The gun play was good. It was shallow, it was missing things. The maps were too similar. The NPCs that we were fighting were way too similar. There wasn't much variety going on in that. And I think when you expect something out of Destiny and Bungie, you expected something more.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, there's, I mean I, I, I could easily look at Arc Raiders and say, yeah, if it fails, I won't be surprised at all. I, I do feel like there is a different sort of fervor around Arc raiders from the, from the PC community who's maybe already played Tarkov and experienced that. But there, there seems to be a different level of enthusiasm and excitement for Arc Raiders where the leaks and the hopeful people that were thinking that it was going to be shadow dropped on Summer Game Fest. Like, like that was gaining a lot of traction within that community. I don't know how big that community is. Granted, there was one though. Yeah, and, and I think I, I think the, when you're talking about the enthusiasm levels, it is night and day between what people were looking at and feeling about Marathon compared to how the same people who should be interested are feeling about Arc Raiders because they seem a lot higher on that. And I enjoy the hell out of our graders. And at the end of the day I'm like, ah, this was also supposed to be a division like Shared World shooter Co op thing that I would have enjoyed probably way more.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Two super chats before I want to end on an article here. Deja Q super chats and says, I can't see this delay not having layoffs follow it. Leadership needs to change for Bungie to survive. They rarely have delays that didn't have layoffs to follow. Would a full Sony acquisition save them? I also think like this one down here that was also calling into leadership from Kazawi executives seem to be the issue at Bungees. They ship mid fix after feedback and Repeat look at d1/, d2 launch verse expansions, let alone just what we've heard out of Bungee for so long of leadership. The changes over there, what's going on? I think again, it's interesting to look at that and then talk about why arrowhead didn't add PvP to helldivers right where they came out and they were so clear, so firm. This is the game we are making. We're not going to do that. We're not. We're not making a game by committee or by our community. We're making a game that'll follow the community. It's long gone and I forget I don't couldn't do it, but it went through quick. Somebody put in there great games don't chase markets, they make them. And I think that's an interesting way and I'm paraphrasing even what that was of an interesting ride. And I think again where we look at PlayStation's problems in this live service is them looking, trying to look ahead and jumping on something, not understanding where they're going. I want to go to the wypn. That's Wesley Yenpool who had this article a while back. Sony live service woes continue as PlayStation executive Jade Raymond exits Fair Games developer after external tests sparked concern Jade Raymond has left Haven Studios, the Sony owned developer behind online multiplayer shooter Fair Games, with the game reportedly delayed following an external test and yet another blow to PlayStation's live service ambition. According to Bloomberg. Raymond exited the company she founded several weeks after an external test of Fair Games apparently didn't go down well. The game was due out in fall 2025 but is now delayed to spring 2026, as Bloomberg put it. PlayStation leadership didn't give Haven staff a reason for her departure, but it came several weeks after an external test of Haven's first game, the online shooter Fair Games, according to people with knowledge on the matter. Some developers at Haven were concerned about how the game was received and its progress, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren't authorized to speak publicly. It's yet more trouble for Sony's embattled live service Ambition, which now appears to be in full retreat, while Arrowhead's Helldivers 2 is a breakout hit, becoming the fastest selling PlayStation Studios game of all time with 12 million copies sold in just 12 weeks. Sony's other live service games were either canceled or suffered disastrous launches. Indeed, Sony's Concord is one of the biggest video game disasters in PlayStation history, lasting just a couple of weeks before it was brought offline amid eye wateringly low player numbers. Sony later decided to kill the game entirely and shut down its developer. The Concorde flop came after Sony already cancelled Naughty Dogs, the Last of Us multiplayer game. And earlier this year, Sony reportedly cancelled two unannounced live service games, one a God of War title in development at Bluepoint, the other in works at Days Gone. Developer Ben since the publishing of this.

[Andy Cortez]

It'S like none of these people talk to each other. Like. Yeah, like it. It's as if that they have these studies that are like, well, we have, we have like, you know, a lot of people doing research and in about the next five years we're gonna have double the amount of gamers on the planet.

[Snow Bike Mike]

But don't tell Mike. That's insane.

[Andy Cortez]

Holy.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, I want to take that too because like the talking to each other and even the just kind of like cross teams at PlayStation Studios and how all this stuff works. It's like you think back to 2015, 16 when Kojima went on his little tour, right.

[Greg Miller]

And then he was searching for new technologies.

[Tim Gettys]

And we get the. The Horizon engine, the decimal Decima engine, right. And I cool, we're going to link up that way and Death Stranding is going to be made. And here we are now on the eve essentially of Death stranding To Death Stranding 1 sold I think way better than anyone would have expected that project to for the time being an exclusive on PlayStation and it being as weird.

[Greg Miller]

As it was and to pull over real quick to remember, just a smaller footprint, a smaller developer, smaller.

[Tim Gettys]

All of that, all of that, right. But a success. And here we are, Death Threatening two. Probably going to be a major success eventually. Going to other consoles and stuff. Bringing in a super chat from Guitar Hero Arrow from the first whispers of marathon back in 2014. I hope this would be the heartfelt single player reboot we eventually got from Doom and Wolfenstein. Can you imagine if Bungie had made a Wolfenstein or Doom scaled Marathon single player reboot that they could because of the way they were acquired and were like we want autonomy also put on PC, PlayStation and Xbox day one. That is a recipe for success. But that we have seen proven that oh people will buy these games to the extent they need to. We can have a smaller team work on this. Like the expectations are different and that is serving an audience that wants that.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Destiny feeds the money bank, right? Like you keep Destiny content going, you keep moving. With Destiny we can have these one off single player experiences that we know we they make money but they're not making the live service money. And now you can have both. You can have your cake and eat it too, right? Hey, here's Destiny. That's my money maker. Hey, here's a really cool Wolfenstein and Doom reboot that no one would ever think. It's going to be played for a year and then come and go and we'll make another one in five. You know that's all you had to do.

[Andy Cortez]

And it's wild thinking that about a year ago was when they laid off 220 employees, and then two months prior to that, or a month prior to that, they laid off 100. So it's like, damn, over 300 people being laid off from Bungee. That's pretty fucking massive. And their pre layoff numbers were 1300 employees. And now they're down to a measly 850. Like so many people. And surely when we look at. I know you can't just like compare apples to oranges, but when we look at Obsidian.

[Greg Miller]

Ah, yeah. Or.

[Andy Cortez]

Or, you know, some of these teams that have these smaller teams break off and do these smaller projects, you know that that is possible. You don't need 850 people working on some. And clearly some of those people were being moved to the Marathon project. Or, you know, these people are kind of like floating between two different divisions or whatever. But it's just so wild to me that, that there are not only that many employees at Bungie that continue to, you know, seemingly get laid off, but to think of the possibility of, holy shit, we could have had a smaller team, 100 or 200 people working on a single player thing. That does not need to. Doesn't need to be the Forever game. If we sold 2 to 3 to 4 million copies of this thing at 50, 60, 70, whatever it is, and it's like 40 incredibly high quality. Like, oh my gosh, that just sounds like such a dream situation and just really shows you.

[Greg Miller]

But Andy, we had to be chasing the dollar signs. We had to chase the dollar signs. We needed a fortnight. We needed an online success that people.

[Andy Cortez]

Only have so much Final pass.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Of course, I'm in an interesting phase of like, I'm not mad at the vision and the idea. Right. Like coming from the Xbox side of things, you see live service games that are doing well. Right. But there's a certain kind of style to that live service game. There's also years of like, you remember Sea of Thieves at launch?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Guess What? We're like seven years into Sea of Thieves. Eso at the beginning of eso. Right. Fallout 76, they have a number of live titles that grounded too. Yep. And so, like, crazy, I like the idea that PlayStation was like, hey, we've nailed what the general audience wants, that single player, narrative driven, third person action adventure game. We got that. Okay, what can we do over here? And I think they just missed the mark of what their audience wanted. And it speaks with Helldivers. Helldivers is a PvE experience. There is no Timmy and Tommy's hunting you down. Helldivers, I've believed since the beginning would not have been as big as it is if it was PvP or had a PvP element. Right, because then you would not have the experiences of sharing moments with your friends. We look at all these live service games that have gone down that Greg just read off. That is not fitting the mold of what PlayStation gamers wanted. Somehow you went from my PlayStation gamers want single player, action, adventure, narrative driven games. Okay, let's give them live service games. Maybe we don't make hardcore PvP first person shooter titles. Let's try to build off of what Xbox did with Sea of Thieves, what Xbox did with eso. We also have to remember that some of these titles take years to really find an audience and stay relevant. And it's not commitment. Cash cow day one.

[Andy Cortez]

You see if these releases today, it doesn't last.

[Tim Gettys]

But to that point too. And I, I love that you're bringing this up because like we should remember that seven years ago or whatever it was, when Rare announced Sea of Thieves, we were like, this isn't what we want from Rare. You know, like even that was a thing of this same conversation applied back then. They turned it around. But what were the factors that got it there? Like how much did the very low barrier of entry of things like game pass, allowing that game to have that community multi platform support, all that with.

[Snow Bike Mike]

PlayStation there's a PlayStation Plus, I am giving you 12 to 20amonth. There's no reason why some of these titles aren't doing that. And PlayStation, it seems to be adverse to some of this. I don't get the vibe of PlayStation like a game pass of like hey, here's my, here's a great one for you. Ninja Theory made a game called Bleeding Edge which just died right away. That was a team arena game and Ninja Theory made that. And guess what? They did put it on game Pass and it lived a lot longer than Concord. And this game over here with Marathon, just follow what's working, look around you and communicate. Like you all said, I don't know how we're missing the mark. It's crazy.

[Andy Cortez]

I edged for about a week, man, until you bled.

[Greg Miller]

You're out of there.

[Snow Bike Mike]

So yeah, I'm just blown away that when we talk Sony Live service, you yes, there's a market for this and this is the right move because guess what, my portfolio over here is already crushing it. It is eating Nintendo and Xboxes for Lunch, Right. They're doing it. But I needed more. I needed that Fortnite moneymaker. And you did the right move getting Bungie. You can explain to me if it's not a full purchase, but, like, having Bungie in the lineup and saying, like, hey, let's make more. Destiny, that's the golden goose. You do that, but everything else. Look at what your market wants. Helldivers was a success because it was a PvE. Make that. But in Sony worlds, we don't need everything to be PvP. The audience doesn't want that.

[Andy Cortez]

It's not even the PvP aspect. It's the. It's the. You need to live here. You need to be engrossed in this ecosystem. Like, I, I. It's crazy, you listing off that massive amount of games that are all trying to do the same thing, which is retain a player for as long as possible. And it really just feels like when. When the person at the top hears about all of these studios going like, I, I just kind of, like, offhandedly mentioned a couple of y' all should be doing this. Not every one of you. Dude, what the, man? That's like.

[Greg Miller]

That's so Casual conversation at a happy hour. Everyone ran back to their studio. I was like, we need to make.

[Tim Gettys]

And unfortunately, it feels like it's even the opposite of that of it. It's them being like, I know you're all doing it. Do it. You know? Yeah. It's not the, like, oh, whoa. I didn't mean all of you. It. It feels like they did mean all of them.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

This is on them as much as it's on anybody.

[Snow Bike Mike]

It also felt like we snapped our fingers. We got four, five studios, and they all started working at the exact same time. And now we're seeing that work being turned into the teacher, and we're all like, oh, like, nobody wanted any.

[Greg Miller]

All these things. No PlayStation games.

[Snow Bike Mike]

There was no, like, hey, you're up first. Slowly go to you, then you. It's just like, here's five, and we're all ready to rock. And it's like, oh, that was too fast.

[Greg Miller]

Here Street Shadow gets the final super chat of the show and says the most successful live service, Sony games, have not been marketed as such, and they'll be the show helldivers 2. Gran Tismo 7. Gran Turismo 7. It's partially a marketing thing.

[Andy Cortez]

Outriders make a game like Outriders, man.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I mean, I don't think you have to. I don't think it's a market thing if, you know It's a title. It's a live service game.

[Greg Miller]

When they did that thing where they did a whole state of player showcase right? Where it was like, oh, it's all live, sir. I don't want this. But here we are.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Now the question is, is Bungie doomed?

[Greg Miller]

Yes.

[Snow Bike Mike]

To end this show. I mean, Miller, is Bungie doomed?

[Greg Miller]

Yes. As I. It's not. Bungie is doomed. As. Hey, we closed Bungie. I do think it's. Bungie is doomed. As they are laying off an additional 65% of their workforce while they focus on supporting PlayStation efforts and work on their own idea, which will never come to fruition. It will become this, you do not play marathon. I don't think.

[Andy Cortez]

What about the frog game?

[Greg Miller]

What about the frog game? A lot of people look for that one.

[Andy Cortez]

The frog for the frog type game.

[Tim Gettys]

They're working on a frog type game.

[Andy Cortez]

Well, Bungee team from Bungee split off to make Frogger to do lfg.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

And they're, you know, frog type games.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, a battle royale Frogger game. I mean, yeah.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Frogger99.

[Tim Gettys]

Like, everything he said is true.

[Snow Bike Mike]

They're making a frog type frog type game.

[Andy Cortez]

We don't know what that means. But they like, there was.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I've been high on the couch once before making up.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Like, he did good.

[Andy Cortez]

There was a team. There was a team at Bungie making. And everybody was like, man, that team is really cooking something. And they broke off and got their own logo.

[Tim Gettys]

Okay, Greg, I'm right there with you. With everything you said about the level of doom that Bungie is, my big thing is that I just. I. I don't believe in. Is that we don't.

[Andy Cortez]

That.

[Tim Gettys]

But that marathon doesn't get released. Like, that's the thing to me that I'm like, oh, man. But I would have never thought they would have done what they did to Concord.

[Greg Miller]

So I think Concord was. Was like such egg on their face and such a learning experience that they have to sit there and go, it'll be better just to eat crow. It didn't come together. We read the feedback. It's a crowded market. We're sorry. Then put it out. Another.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. This is like five people will understand this. But, Mike, this is the Phoenix Suns going all in on Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And mortgaging their future.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Yes.

[Andy Cortez]

And that team was a disaster.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Where are we at? Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And now you are gonna. And it's not just like that team was a disaster. Let's just be ready to Go next year. No, like you're those teams were working for so long on these things and now that they are going to be gone then you are going to see the fallout of this. It's like similar to us when we would talk about the Pandemic developed games. This fallout is going to continue for the next several years of all of these failed studios with all of this lost, I would say like confidence from employees being like why would we want to go work over there? We, we've seen how badly mismanaged all of this shit is. Like all of that stuff has consequences and we are going to see the fallout of all of these failures for the next next five years because that's how long it takes to make these big ass games.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Now we'll see a video like Halo Studios come out of like we're Bungie and we make Destiny and we fucking love Destiny. All right. Stick to it.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

All right. Well ladies, gentlemen and enbs, we'll be watching whatever happens to Marathon, Bungie and of course the entire video game industry right here on Kinda Funny Games your place for live talk shows about video games and more. Of course we start with Kinda funny games daily 10am Pacific roll into a games cast sometime who changed the topic and then stream some games or do a podcast. No matter where you get the show. Thank you for your support. Whether it be on Twitch TV, kindafunnygames, YouTube.com kindafunnygames Apple, Spotify or some other podcast service. We'd love it if you liked, subscribe, share and left a review. But most importantly if you picked up a membership over on YouTube.com kindafunnygames patreon.com kindafunny Apple or Spotify to get all of our shows ad free. Get your daily dose of me and keep an 11 person independent games media company alive. For now we're saying goodbye on the Gamescast but reminding you we are doing a stream Nvidia sponsored FBC Firebreak excited multiplayer game that just launch looks like and how you all enjoy that but until next time it's been our pleasure to serve you.