After months of haters pointing to Steam charts to predict Marathon‘s impending doom, Sony has signaled to investors that it’s not giving up on Bungie’s new sci-fi shooter just yet. That ongoing faith in the underlying game is just the latest way Marathon continues to distinguish itself from Concord, Sony’s biggest gaming flop ever.
“In our studio business, earnings from Bungie’s title portfolio did not reach our expectations,” Sony CFO Lin Tao said during Friday’s earnings call. “So we downwardly revised our business plan and impaired the full amount of the fixed assets related to Bungie except for goodwill.”
That impairment cost was measured at roughly $560 million, bringing the total downgrade of the $3.6 billion Bungie acquisition for the year up to $765 million. A big portion of that no doubt comes from Destiny 2‘s player base falling off a cliff after last year’s expansion was lackluster and the newest content update was delayed by three months.
But it likely also reflects Marathon failing to meet the ambitious sales targets you might expect to be attached to the first new shooter from the makers of Halo in over a decade. Sony didn’t reveal official sales figures for the game’s first month or the total number of players reached, which some data firms have estimated to be between 1 and 2 million. But instead of pulling the plug like it did with Concord, Sony told investors it’s going to work on improving the game.
“Player receptions to Marathon is strong, with the game receiving a Metacritic score of 82 and more than 90 percent of the player review on Steam being positive,” Tao said. “Engagement metrics such as retention also remain at a high level. Going forward, we aim to improve the performance of the game by working to retain highly engaged core users through the introduction of additional content, further improvements in the game play experience and expansion of the user base.”
Bungie has already outlined a light roadmap for the game’s first two seasons, and creative director Julia Nardin recently revealed that the studio has the game’s sci-fi story beats planned out for years to come. It still might not reach some of those arcs, but Sony certainly doesn’t sound ready to bail any time in the immediate future.
While the studio could still face fresh cuts, Sony clearly sees a future with Marathon that it didn’t with Concord. It’s still unclear, though, how a dedicated but small group of core fans can sustain the game long-term, or what gameplay knobs Bungie can turn to try to bring in players who have been put off by the shooter’s uncompromising stakes and degree of PvP challenge.
