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A new report claims that the project was a rather costly AAA affair.
"Hello everyone and welcome back to another GRTV News, today we're going to be talking a little bit about Marathon because a report has come out which I think perhaps puts the game in a little bit of an awkward place, if there's any truth to the report obviously."
"Basically we haven't ever really known how much money it costs Bungie, well I suppose Sony Interactive Entertainment to make Marathon, but this new report has come out and basically said that it could have cost 200 million, 250 million dollars, something like that, which would be in line with a lot of AAA games these days, but that also comes with its fair share of problems, so anyway let's dive on in and take a look."
"Report claims Marathon cost over 250 million dollars as players numbers slide, a well known video game journalist reports that Marathon's budget is over 200 million dollars, slightly more than 250 million dollars.
So as you're probably aware the development of Marathon has been long and tumultuous and as is often the case, time is money in the gaming industry."
"Now Forbes journalist Paul Tassi reports that the game has been extremely expensive to develop, making it yet another in a long line of AAA titles for the live service model that may struggle to turn a profit.
He says I can confirm Marathon's budget is over 200 million dollars, slightly more than 250 million, that does not include ongoing costs for maintenance and new content now."
"Last week it was reported that the game had sold 1.2 million copies, a figure Tassi says he has a verifying.
About 70% of players are on Steam, the game is also available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S and X and on the latter it ranks 106th on the list of most played games, but many have dropped off since release."
"While it's nowhere near a Concord level crisis, Tassi sums up the situation as follows.
It's a must win in Sony's floundering live service push, you have to take context into account here, and there are higher expectations and more pressure on Marathon than most.
It needs more players, it needs to stop losing players, it needs to make money going forward from its microtransactions."
"We don't know how Sony internally views Marathon, but in due course a quarterly report will likely be released presenting this to investors.
Simply put, Marathon is an expensive bet in an uncertain market, and Bungie's above all and above all the game's future unfortunately feels anything other than secure."
"So this is a bit of an awkward one really, because obviously Bungie needs a win, because Destiny has been struggling for a long long while, so there is that, but also PlayStation need a win with their live service things, because they've done a lot of these games and none of them have really been huge successes."
"Now the other thing as well is that $200 million is a lot of money, especially $250 million if this is what it's cost to make Marathon, it's a huge amount of money.
But that money is a little bit different than it would be, let's say for example, let's just throw some hypothetical numbers around, absolutely no truth to these, but let's just say it cost Capcom $250 million to make Resident Evil Requiem."
"Now that's still a lot of money, but Resident Evil Requiem when it ships is basically, that's basically the end of the financing that Capcom needs to do for the game, because they'll probably be winding down the marketing, the development cost of the game will be significantly reduced because you'll probably only have a skeleton crew working on just bug fixes and the occasional things."
"I mean I know they're doing a DLC, but you're still, you're not talking about the full scale development team.
Now for a game like Marathon, the game launches and that's only really like phase one, because the development team remain active, they're continuously trying to add additional content to the game."
"And that means that whenever new content comes out, it gets marketed and it means that the costs are constantly ongoing, right?
So as Tassi says there, if it costs more than $250 million to make, and that doesn't include the ongoing costs of maintenance and new content, the game needs to really start selling some copies now."
"And this is where the issue that Marathon is running into comes, because 1.2 million copies last week, let's be really generous over the Easter weekend and say that it sold now up to about 1.5 million copies.
It's not a terrible figure, but for a live service game that costs as much money as this to make, it's not good enough."
"It's simply not.
And it just, it all comes together to a point where you think, I don't know how this game can possibly survive.
And this is what, this is an issue I had with Marathon going into it."
"And I'm always quite vocal about these live service games, but I always had this thing in my mind that I'm not too sure Marathon will have much of a presence in the game space after its first anniversary.
I know a lot of people have played the game and are very, very impressed with the game, but the problem is, is that Marathon is, A, it's not free, right?
Which means you're not going to get many people checking in, and also means if it's not free, you can't say that you're going to get a lot of microtransactions, or a lot of funding from microtransactions, because there's the entry fee that people have to pay anyway."
"So there's that.
So that's one hurdle that Marathon has to face.
I'm not saying the game should have been free, I'm just saying that if you're going to make it a pay game, you need to, that needs to be the predominant way that you're bringing in income, at least around launch."
"The second thing is, there's a lot, a bit of lost faith with Bungie at the moment because of the way that Destiny's gone.
So I think you'd almost be a little bit, there's a bit of hubris to say that Bungie is going to be able to support Marathon in this really comprehensive fashion and make sure there's tons of new content constantly coming out."
"Because I've been following Destiny for a long, long while, and they haven't managed to do that with Destiny for several years.
So to say that Marathon was going to be any different was perhaps a little bit rash, and so far, since the game's come out, I don't think they've really done that."
"Early doors still with that though.
The other thing as well that's worth mentioning is that, and I think this is the big one, is that it's an extraction shooter.
And again, you could argue and say that Marathon is the best extraction shooter on the market, but extraction shooters don't have the level of reach that other games do."
"Because they're typically more hardcore, and they're typically for a more niche part of the shooter FPS fanbase.
Now I know that Ark Raiders is kind of the exception to that, but that's just a thing.
Ark Raiders was kind of an anomaly."
"And also, look how Ark Raiders has gone.
It had an immense launch, it sold millions and millions of copies.
And now look at it, it's getting quite a bit of heat from its players because of the way that it's being supported."
"So I've always looked at Marathon as kind of a game that had everything going against it.
But if they could have made the game for $120 million or something like that, then you look at it and you go, well, it's got a lot of things against it, but it doesn't need to sell that many copies to break even under AAA standards."
"Now the problem is, if this report is true, and it costs over $250 million to make, again, not including the additional funds that would have been put into the game since it launched, which is probably getting close to $300 million at this point, you have to look at it and say, this game has a very hard or a very long road ahead of it if it wants to continue to remain a success."
"Because the one thing that these kinds of games don't have is time.
Again, you look at, for example, Remedy.
Alan Wake 2 can come out and sell 1 million copies in its first year, and Remedy goes, we're fine with that."
"Because they know that given time, over five years or something like that, Alan Wake 2 will eventually break even with its production costs, and then it will just be bringing in royalties.
In five years' time, will Marathon be around?
That's the big question you have to ask."
"And it's not just, will you be able to buy a copy of Marathon?
It's like, will the servers be active?
Will any of this be active?
It's hard to say."
"So I think this is another fine example that this live service push that people are doing doesn't work.
And it's also another firm example that AAA titles cost too much money to make, simply as."
"So I don't know, a lot of moving parts here.
We'll have to stay tuned to see how things change.
But yeah, I would say that this is a concerning place for Bungie to be in right now, assuming again that there's truth to this report that Tassie shared."
"But that's all the time that I have.
I'll be back now on Monday for the next year on TV News, so stay tuned for that.
Otherwise, yeah, thank you for joining me and I'll see you all on the next one."
