Sony

It was just four years ago that Sony promised to launch 12 live service games by early 2026. Since then, many of those have been delayed, canceled, or taken offline. But that doesn’t seem to be deterring the console maker. PlayStation Studios CEO Hermen Hulst said in a new business update that live service games remain a “key strategic pillar” for the company and that Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter Marathon is learning from last year’s multiplayer flop, Concord.

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While some PlayStation fans keep hoping Sony will cut its losses in live service gaming, that seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. Despite recently killing multiplayer projects at Bluepoint Games and Bend Studio, which suffered a mass layoff as a result, as well as closing London Studio, Firewalk Studios, and Neon Koi last year, the PS5 maker listed “building a foundation” and “strengthen capabilities” in games-as-a-service as two key priorities for the platform’s future.

The next test of that strategy will be Bungie’s Marathon. After taking a hatchet to the mega studio it acquired for $3.7 billion in 2022, the Bellevue-based team is preparing to launch a sci-fi extraction shooter where players fight over loot in matches and lose it for good upon death. A recent alpha test showed both the promise and shortcomings of the game, with players praising the classic “Bungie feel” in the running, jumping, and shooting but criticizing the lack of proximity voice chat or a solo queue mode. There have been calls to delay the planned September launch, lest it become the next Concord.

“Live service, we really see that as a great opportunity for us but with that great opportunity are some unique challenges associated so we’ve talked about some early success as with Helldivers 2, we’ve also faced some challenges as with the release of Concord,” Hulst said during the briefing. “I think that some really good work actually went into that title, some really big effort, but ultimately that title entered into a hyper-competitive segment of the market I think it was insufficiently differentiated to be able to resonate with players.”

The veteran studio executive said PlayStation has reviewed its game development processes as a result, with a focus on earlier checks, testing, and user feedback. One of the big questions with Concord was how Sony seemed caught by complete surprise by the sheer amount of apathy from players at launch. Marathon is very different coming from an established studio and experimenting in newer genre, but faces similar questions around what Sony’s doing to make sure it can find a reliable fanbase that will help it grow and evolve after release.

“For Marathon it’s our goal to release a very bold, a very innovative and deeply engaging title, it’s going to be the first new Bungie title in over a decade, so we’re really excited for that release,” Hulst said. “We’re monitoring, we’re going through the test cycles, we’re monitoring the closed alpha cycle that the team just went through…some of that feedback frankly has been varied but it’s super useful frankly that’s why you do this testing and the constant testing and the constant revalidation of assumptions to me is just to valuable to iterate and to constantly improve the so when launch comes we’re going to give the title the optimal chance of success.”

Marathon was MIA from Sony’s recent State of Play showcase, despite being out in just three months. Part of that may be due its recent art plagiarism scandal, forcing the studio to scrub stolen decals from the game and its promotional marketing, a process that surely delayed any new trailers. But it’s also unclear how much of the feedback from the alpha test the team can incorporate in just over 12 weeks. Marathon isn’t even in the top-50 most wishlisted games on Steam at the moment.

Could Marathon end up getting delayed after all? In his remarks, Hulst mentioned Sony being very excited for the game’s launch “this fiscal year.” Was not specifying September just an oversight, or the first tell that Sony is once again re-evaluating its live service calendar? Bloomberg reported that multiplayer heist shooter Fairgame$ was at one point planned for fall 2025 before being pushed to next year over poor feedback from external testing. Maybe Sony thinks Marathon might do better with five extra months of development time. It would then be launching in February 2026, the same month as Helldivers 2, the only successful live service experiment it’s seen so far.

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