• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Marathon approaching 15k CCU low (sponsored by coachmcguirk91 - still having a blast)

Men_in_Boxes said:
You are celebrating a large funeral.

giphy.gif
Click to expand...
Imagine being the GaaS guy and celebrating the demise of one of the few successful AAA GaaS franchises.
 
Hari Seldon said:
Shareholders. Marathon is a business model for shareholders. Theoretically it should be printing money with a studio of 30 people supporting it. But Bungie is extremely poorly managed.
Click to expand...
You're not wrong, but it's time to start shifting some of the blame to Sony. If they can't understand why this is happening to Bungie then maybe they shouldn't have forked out over 3 billion for them. At some point people need to figure out Sony is poorly managing Bungie by leaving the leadership in place that is bringing the ship down. Poor management all the way up.
 
SlightlyUnstable said:
You're not wrong, but it's time to start shifting some of the blame to Sony. If they can't understand why this is happening to Bungie then maybe they shouldn't have forked out over 3 billion for them. At some point people need to figure out Sony is poorly managing Bungie by leaving the leadership in place that is bringing the ship down. Poor management all the way up.
Click to expand...
What probably happened is interest rates were low in Q1 2022 when they bought them (possibly lowest in history). They were buying up lots of studios around the same time... Firewalk, Haven, Neon Koi etc...

Combined with D2 was surely making bank at the time, they needed someone to spearhead GAAS tips and tricks for all the other internally worked on GAAS, and MS just announced they bought Activision, which at the time people guessed MS might lock COD behind Xbox and PC only.

So add it up, and Sony thought it was the right time jump in and join the rest of the GAAS shooters gravy trains and buy Bungie. So instead of measly Destiny 30% cuts, they wanted 100% cuts. And if the rest of their new GAAS games are successful (Helldivers 2 yes, the rest no), that's more 100% cuts from GAAS.

Totally backfired. Only new success out of all of this is Helldivers 2.

But at that time, it wasnt just Sony. MS was gobbling up studios too. And somehow Embracer Group was spending billions buying all these tier 2 and tier 3 gaming companies where at one point they had 100+ studios under their umbrella. Most of them were probably napkin math bullshit, but you get the drill. Big tech money as always being spent like it grows on trees.
 
Last edited:
StreetsofBeige said:
Totally backfired. Only new success out of all of this is Helldivers 2.
Click to expand...

And Helldivers 2's success came out of left field.

The moral is trying to orchestrate trend chasing shit is a risky gamble with way more failures than successes.

Smart experimentation that is budgetted modestly and only occasionally can sometimes catch lightning in a bottle.

Smart risks. The majority needs to be what your audience actually wants and is asking for. AKA the bread and butter. AKA the Greatest Hits.

Not betting the fucking farm on GaaS and waisting half a decade
 
Last edited:
Plague Doctor said:
And Helldivers 2's success came out of left field.

The moral is trying to orchestrate trend chasing shit is a risky gamble with way more failures than successes.

Smart experimentation that is budgetted modestly and only occasionally can sometimes catch lightning in a bottle.

Smart risks. The majority needs to be what your audience actually wants and is asking for. AKA the bread and butter. AKA the Greatest Hits.

Not betting the fucking farm on GaaS and waisting half a decade
Click to expand...
Thats the problem with tech and gaming. Always some companies and products are small in scope and indie-ish, but once any of them get a taste of big success suddenly everything going forward always has to be giant budget blockbuster games where no budget is too small.

No other industry works like this.

Even in entertainment adjacent things like TV and film, each company will have their big budget shows and films. But also low budget arthouse content with microscopic budgets, so if the bombs big deal. It only cost $1M. It's not like just because they've all had top raking media every product going forward has to be the same giant splashy content.

In gaming, those cheap arthouse films are like indie games made by 5 people for dirt cheap. They might make a shit game that bombs. I get it, dont make anything to risque like a sex game or Schedule 1. But how about a Terraria or Balatro. If it bombs, the losses are literally a rounding error. But some reason the big gaming companies dont like making those kinds of games carving out tiny teams. Too low brow I guess.
 
Last edited:
hq720.jpg

Star Trek GIF

duhmetree said:
tbh a great deal to get all of Destiny 2 for $25. That's a lot of content
Click to expand...
Yeah, I didn't want to talk too much about the actual content but they have everything on sale right now for around that price total and you get all content but also they have removed much of the monetization and seasonal stuff and added back in the old artifacts from past seasons so it really opens up builds since you can build with a meta from any season. It's a total dream update and they would have never been able to do this if the game wasn't shutting down. It absolutely proves that monetization hurts the fun in these games. There is a years worth of content here on top of the crazy new class additions, armor, loot, skins, every exotic that had no catalyst got one, tower vendors reverting to reputation, the map coming back, sparrow racing pvp, mech/tank battle pvp. It's big.

Also D2 twitch stats....
  • 56,916 viewers right now
  • 84,040 24-hour peak
  • 523,610 all-time peak
  • 3.3 years ago
 
Last edited:
Hollywood Hitman said:
Marathon got absolutely fucking embarrassed today 😂 even if I played that game I'd have to absolutely retire out of sheer embarrassment
Click to expand...
Usa peaks unknown till later, but D2 almost 10x Marathons peak today. And over 4x Marathons S2 peak day which was a bit more than 40k. And almost 2x Marathons launch day peak of 88k.

Wrong horse bet.

But you can see that sony/bungie were trying to ride a gaas tandem of Destiny and Marathon as double revenue.

They should had stayed trie and stick with the marathon universe as D2, then work on and transition to D3.

They aren't coke or Nabisco with a shit ton of products to spread around. Sometimes game companies should just focus on one product or IP at a time unless they can prove they can handle lots like a Activision or ea etc...
 
Last edited:
Hari Seldon said:
Shareholders. Marathon is a business model for shareholders. Theoretically it should be printing money with a studio of 30 people supporting it. But Bungie is extremely poorly managed.
Click to expand...
The make these games for investors but the problem is that investors are either total idiots or have strategies so complex that is actually bad for them for their investments actually being viable businesses and not crazy bullshit companies made by schizophrenics on a cocktail of psychoactive drugs.
 
Wildebeest said:
The make these games for investors but the problem is that investors are either total idiots or have strategies so complex that is actually bad for them for their investments actually being viable businesses and not crazy bullshit companies made by schizophrenics on a cocktail of psychoactive drugs.
Click to expand...
I don't think any big investors even know what they are doing. They probably get some jazzy PowerPoint presentation and think it's clear sailing.

Mindseye and splitgate 2 each got over $100M in investors funding.

Figure that one out.
 
What's the bet for the conversion rate from the f2p period?
I'm thinking 15% as a ceiling, but realistically sub 10% will stick around by Jun 18th about a week after the f2p period.

Even if they bought it at a discount, I don't think they'll stick around for long.
 
Timberwolf25 said:
What's the bet for the conversion rate from the f2p period?
I'm thinking 15% as a ceiling, but realistically sub 10% will stick around by Jun 18th about a week after the f2p period.

Even if they bought it at a discount, I don't think they'll stick around for long.
Click to expand...
Yea I agree. What I'm curious about is how many are returning players currently playing or if it's the f2p crowd that is keeping this afloat, I got a feeling the wipe really turned off season 1 players if I had to guess
 
Zacfoldor said:
hq720.jpg

Star Trek GIF


Yeah, I didn't want to talk too much about the actual content but they have everything on sale right now for around that price total and you get all content but also they have removed much of the monetization and seasonal stuff and added back in the old artifacts from past seasons so it really opens up builds since you can build with a meta from any season. It's a total dream update and they would have never been able to do this if the game wasn't shutting down. It absolutely proves that monetization hurts the fun in these games. There is a years worth of content here on top of the crazy new class additions, armor, loot, skins, every exotic that had no catalyst got one, tower vendors reverting to reputation, the map coming back, sparrow racing pvp, mech/tank battle pvp. It's big.

Also D2 twitch stats....
  • 56,916 viewers right now
  • 84,040 24-hour peak
  • 523,610 all-time peak
  • 3.3 years ago
Click to expand...
Any chance for a new comer who dosent know fuck all about destiny 2 to enter now ?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Marathon Server Slam CCU Watch
15 16 17 18 19
923
6K
PeteBull replied
  • Poll
The Marathon (Full Release) CCU Prediction Thread...
3 4 5 6 7
329
4K
yurinka replied
  • Locked
Marathon has yet to crack 100k CCU on steam after 1 month of release
Opinion 
8
343
Orpheus replied
  • Poll
Will the Destiny 2 final update (June) surpass Marathon's all time peak CCU?
2 3
118
422
PeteBull replied
The Subnautica 2 CCU right now...
2 3 4
165
1K
nemiroff replied
Top Bottom