RBMango

Man, seeing Bluepoint removed from that list is a bummer.

I would GLADLY take another Uncharted at this point. Lost Legacy proved this series can work without Nate.

@get2sammyb As much as I like Naughty Dog, I think the massive success they've experienced and how much they've been orbiting the Hollywood scene recently has overinflated their idea of what it means to be a "Naughty Dog game" to an almost unsustainable degree. I think Chris on Sacred Symbols put it best when he said they (and PlayStation as a whole these days) were "HBO-brained" and prioritize "making acting exercises for thespians" a little too much.

Factions 2 should have just been a mode via a free update, a la Legends or Valhalla. PlayStation's stunningly poor studio management this gen has its role in this, but I think Naughty Dog and the heads there deserve a lot of the blame too, given ND's hubris and notorious scope/feature creep. I still can't believe no one at Naughty Dog or Sony had the foresight to understand that something of this scale and financial backing needed to be massively supported and monetized before Bungie told them. Even most armchair analysts know that basic facet of reality.

Oh my god this is beyond pathetic

Not excited about this at all until the game is actually out. I've seen too many of these hyped up partnerships and acquisitions lead to nowhere to get excited about another one.

Please brother Nomura I'm starving here

Sad news indeed. I liked Wanderstop quite a bit.

So stoked to see more.

@Kierant202 If Tassi's mainly corroborating those numbers, hoo boy...

@LogicStrikesAgain In my defense, I'd have that same mindset if Fairgames was one of their typical lavishly produced single-player games and shared the exact same tone as that debut trailer.

@LogicStrikesAgain I'm not sure I saw the hatred before the first alpha test other than people saying it looked super underwhelming, which is something I agreed with. The "hate" really blew up after the plagiarism scandal, and that is something Bungie 100% deserved imo. In Marathon's case, I'm not sympathetic to Sony and Bungie also because I don't know what they were expecting with the snowball effects of years of constant mistakes, bad messaging, and misreading the room. At some point, these devs and publishers have to get way better at reading the room and realizing they can't brute force an audience to immediately clap for their latest product, especially if it's a live service. It's why I don't blame people for immediately dismissing a lot of these Sony live services. You expect bad and cynical live services from the usual suspects. But getting them from a company as storied and revered as PlayStation is understandably frustrating.

Regarding Fairgames, I do hope it fails because it looks like the worst kind of hot cynical garbage with a grotesque, pompous, and hypocritical "eat the rich" tone. It that's the tone they're going with, I absolutely do want that to fail out of sheer spite. Horizon: Hunters Gathering I'm way less spiteful of, but there are areas where one can easily smell the cynicism on that, especially with the character designs and tone that are way different from what people expect of the franchise.

@LogicStrikesAgain I agree it's not a disliked game. In any other case, something with a passionate and dedicated niche audience like this is something I would champion and consider a big success. The problem is that, at the bare minimum, I imagine Sony and Bungie have collectively spent around $200 million on Marathon, and (allegedly) 1.2 million copies with a steadily declining playerbase is just not good at all, given the cost.

I'm also not going to give Bungie the same kind of grace you are considering, given how long they've been in this business and their past behavior. If the excessive hate you're referring to is stuff like the general sentiment from disgruntled Destiny 2 players, the blowback from the proven plagiarism, and Bungie being seen as arbiters of Sony's failed live service future, then we don't see eye-to-eye on this. In fact, I'll go even further by saying that I think some people in the fanbase and gaming press are being far too forgiving and naive about Marathon and its future, given Bungie's history and Sony's enormous investments in them. I don't see the blowback it got as excessive at all.

@nomither6 That chart should be updated to include Fairgames.

@Fizza Actually, it was the top 5 of the NPD charts that Marathon allegedly needed to hit to be considered a success within Bungie. It that's true, whoever set that bar to hit within Bungie is a moron.

Alinea Analytics isn't one of the sources I have the highest amount of trust in, so I'm taking this information with a large grain of salt.

That being said, given every other publicly visible bit of info out there concerning player numbers, chart positions, and third-party estimates, these numbers wouldn't surprise me. Marathon is a demanding game within an already niche genre, and Sony and Bungie spending the colossal amount of money they did on this project and its developer almost guarantees nothing but meteoric success and retention will be seen as satisfactory in their eyes. Sorry, this isn't "haters caused this game to fail" or "PlayStation gamers won't try anything but single-player games" type of stuff. This situation is yet another case of Bungie and modern PlayStation making very bad business and financial moves.

LOL what the hell is going on at PlayStation??

Really, really excited to see what this game is all about. Even with their recent blunders, RGG remains a studio that has my attention.

Stranger Than Heaven? I'm there!

Wow, that gold Alicia case is stunning.

Both ranked and Cryo being locked to weekends only is a really stupid idea imo given the slowly bleeding player numbers.

Let's see if Bethesda can properly update it without breaking things and causing new problems.

Square Enix is the beacon of dumb business decisions, so this doesn't surprise me.

It should be nominated for even more awards.

I still just can't believe the bubble of delusion they created within that studio.

Buy a PS5, crybabies.

@Oram77 It will, but at least we get much clearer pictures of what is true and what isn't than we do now by only having a limited peek at Steam's stats. Even as it is now, I wish we got way more information with Steamdb beyond active players and peak concurrent counts.

If we got in-depth insights like that, I would gladly accept the trade-off of a bunch of annoying and lying grifters using the stats to push their narrative.

The only thing that can combat information misrepresentation is more transparency and context. Frankly, regardless of who uses it for whatever purpose, I think we need a Steamdb-type service for every single publicly-usable platform. Steamdb only seems to be a problem when it affects certain games negatively, and we never have these conversations about "maidenless behavior" when Steamdb shows a game doing really, really well without much other context to go on.

For a moment, I actually thought that was a Charizard in the thumbnail.

The first Legends was one of the very rare live service offerings I put a significant amount of time into with friends, and I'm sure this version of it will be really fun too. Legends is what Last of Us Online should have been imo

I had my problems with Returnal, but I maintain the opinion that it's easily the most unique game from Sony this gen. It must have done something right with me that I was willing to grind for the platinum trophy. I trust Housemarque to do some cool s**t with Saros.

Oh, give me a ****ing break. Bungie knew damn well what they were doing when they designed the microtransactions that way, and are only pivoting because they got called out.

Also, 88k peak concurrent players on Steam during your release weekend is not good, considering Sony spent nearly $4 billion on Bungie, spent millions more on Marathon, and has to spend many more millions to support it. There's no way Sony is pleased with these launch weekend numbers. Bungie is also obsessed with daily active users as their main metric, so they're going to pull every scummy trick in the book to increase that number.

As others have said, I'd love more games on the scale of Sons of Sparta but not the quality of it.

Ugh this breaks my heart...

A damn solid 7 for me. I enjoyed it a lot.

This was maybe the biggest disappointment of last year for me. Its beautiful art and music are almost completely wasted on such a dull and shallow game.

This is actually Kojima. Trust me. 🤡

Wow, sooner than I thought.

Shame Team Asobi didn't contribute. I need a sneak peak at a Marathon VIP bot.

I've been eagerly awaiting this day from the perspective of someone who is fascinated by game stats and this whole Sony live service saga.

Also, for those who are expecting/want this to fail, I can GUARANTEE you it won't in the short term. Bungie's name alone will drive a lot of sales.

Music to my ears.

@TheArt As suicidal as that would be for Xbox, I'd greatly respect the balls to do something that extreme.

@ButterySmooth30FPS I very rarely say something "offends" me in the gaming space, but Xbox's nakedly cynical reasons for gaslighting people into thinking exclusives were bad and antiquated were genuinely offensive to me. I didn't tolerate that for a second.

@Weebleman It blows my mind when people I personally know don't understand this basic concept and then cry that PlayStation is dominating due to a lack of competition. Gee, I wonder what the major thing that drives competition among consoles is... 🤔🤔🤔

@Krlozgod I don't own an Xbox, but I would have been ecstatic if Xbox had removed their exclusives from PC and told me verbatim "if you want to play Bethesda games, buy an Xbox". I'm a firm believer in exclusives, and I'd gladly miss out on a few games due to not owning the system if it meant Xbox was thriving and competitive in that space again.

I will forever resent Xbox for driving this crap narrative that exclusives are bad and anti-consumer because they are ass at attracting people to buy their own exclusives and consoles. Good riddance to that nonsense.

@Oram77 God bless whoever that faction is within PlayStation that thought going to PC dilutes their identity.

Excellent news. I will always champion PlayStation Studios first-party single-player games staying exclusive to PlayStation consoles. Very few people cause drama when Nintendo games are exclusive to Nintendo consoles, yet when PlayStation does the same thing, it's labeled as "anti-consumer" by some. Cry me a damn river.

Then how about an hour of uncut PS5/XSX footage to prove people's suspicions wrong? If they really have nothing to hide, that level of transparency shouldn't be a problem.

Concord 2: Highguardin'