OuterLimits
Member
I imagine they can't attempt F2P at least until Season 2 launches. Perhaps they first put it on PS+ Extra hoping to increase console players which appears to be pretty dire currently.
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Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Marathon approaching 15k CCU low (sponsored by coachmcguirk91 - still having a blast)
I imagine they can't attempt F2P at least until Season 2 launches. Perhaps they first put it on PS+ Extra hoping to increase console players which appears to be pretty dire currently.
falconhoof
Member
Given that the Server Slam had their peak CCU counts but even that dropped over the weekend kinda indicated that F2P would likely create another short lived peak.
Bungie know that one of their issues is the on-boarding (around ~10 hours). If they don't fix that and go F2P then people will bounce very quickly. They won't even want to get their $40 worth.
StreetsofBeige
Member
Peak today is 42k. Similar to Tuesday.
Compared to yesterday (Sat vs Fri): 42k vs 43.9k (-1.9k or -4%)
Sat vs Sat comparisons (Mar 5 launch day peak 88.3k)
Mar 7. 75.1k
Mar 14. 58.7k (-16.4k or -22%)
Mar 21. 53.6k (-5.1k or -9%). Cryo launch weekend
Mar 28. 42k (-11.6k or -22%)
Compared to yesterday (Sat vs Fri): 42k vs 43.9k (-1.9k or -4%)
Sat vs Sat comparisons (Mar 5 launch day peak 88.3k)
Mar 7. 75.1k
Mar 14. 58.7k (-16.4k or -22%)
Mar 21. 53.6k (-5.1k or -9%). Cryo launch weekend
Mar 28. 42k (-11.6k or -22%)
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Nydius
Member
Come now. You know what would actually happen with Men in Boxes.
He'll change his PFP to something Fairgames related, pretend like he knew all along that Marathon was going to fail, then begin his new campaign touting Fairgames as the next greatest GaaS of all time.
I collect VHS tapes
Member
... We are totally going to support this for the next 10 years. Kind of vibes
Well, maybe is doable after all
I'm sure Bungie would love to support this game indefinitely, for as long as Sony pays
The question is how long will Sony want to keep this going
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StreetsofBeige
Member
Prediction made two weeks ago. Right on target for Tues March 31.
Monday should be 36-37k. Then it'll drop a couple grand to 34k-ish. Let's go!
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StreetsofBeige
Member
You never know.
Bungie has a knack for getting big publishers to buy them out or partner with them to keep those funds keep flowing in.
Negotiator101
Member
They had some leverage before they don't now.
Dropping on a Saturday compared to a Friday is not an indication of a healthy game.
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
Both Sony and Bungie have to be concerned about those numbers. No way is it the launch either of them wanted or expected.
StereoVsn
Gold Member
All I care about is that Russian Fishing 4 is staying strong
. Just imagine how well RF5 will do! This is the true competitor to Marathon.
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Von Hugh
Member
Truly the Mario 69 experience of this generation.
StreetsofBeige
Member
11 am completed hour stats.
Compared to yesterday (Sun vs Sat): 29k vs 28.7k (+300 or +1%)
Sun vs last Sun: 29k vs 36.1k (-7.1k or -20%)
Last Sunday's peak was 53.7k. So assuming it'll trend -20% all day, the peak tonight should be about 43k. That's literally about -50% from launch peak of 88k.
Compared to yesterday (Sun vs Sat): 29k vs 28.7k (+300 or +1%)
Sun vs last Sun: 29k vs 36.1k (-7.1k or -20%)
Last Sunday's peak was 53.7k. So assuming it'll trend -20% all day, the peak tonight should be about 43k. That's literally about -50% from launch peak of 88k.
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StreetsofBeige
Member
12 pm completed hour stats.
Compared to yesterday (Sun vs Sat): 30.9k vs 31.1k (-200 or -1%). If it keeps tracking like this all day, it would be the first Sunday ever to be lower than a Saturday.
Sun vs last Sun: 30.9k vs 39.7k (-8.8k or -22%)
Last Sunday's peak was 53.7k. So assuming it'll trend -22% all day, the peak tonight should be about 42k. That would be -52% from launch peak of 88k.
Compared to yesterday (Sun vs Sat): 30.9k vs 31.1k (-200 or -1%). If it keeps tracking like this all day, it would be the first Sunday ever to be lower than a Saturday.
Sun vs last Sun: 30.9k vs 39.7k (-8.8k or -22%)
Last Sunday's peak was 53.7k. So assuming it'll trend -22% all day, the peak tonight should be about 42k. That would be -52% from launch peak of 88k.
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StereoVsn
Gold Member
So basically it's dropping 20% or so week to week. I guess we will see sub-40K weekend next week.
I wonder if the game will stabilize once it gets to like 20-25K weekend highs in a few weeks.
StreetsofBeige
Member
It's consistently been dropping about -20% per day/week (week over week comparisons) since launch. Only days it didnt are the first cryo day of the week which helped a lot. But then days later it loses back those cryo pops getting back to -20% like they never happened. So it shows:
1. Cryo does work on day one and pops up the CCU
2. Days later it majorly fizzles out. So much so the following days do worse than usual (weekends are flat or even go down)
3. So the gamers amped to play cryo and/or casuals are bailing after cryo. Casuals may be dropping anyway, but for cryo gamers they do it day one, but then dont stick around days later to do more cryo or grind up gear to help the CCU. It's like after cryo day one, both sets of gamers just drop off so it's not retaining gamers and the CCU gets back to normal downward trending.
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Raven117
Member
They will probably get a skeleton crew on it…and over promise on the marketing
Pollux
Member
The Bungie way
Memati187
Member
Raven117
Member
Yuppers
falconhoof
Member
I collect VHS tapes
Member
Btw they need to con people into thinking this will be around for a while because people online are already starting to share concern that it isn't worth investing into MTX given the game has possibly only another year of life left
People are extremely reluctant to invest in a game that is performing so poorly given how much Bungie and this game cost
People are extremely reluctant to invest in a game that is performing so poorly given how much Bungie and this game cost
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StreetsofBeige
Member
Regarding the meta, best way to help it is to have Ranked 24/7. No Unranked, no staggered Rank days like now. So at least new or shitty players get lumped together, while the good sweaty players play in their lobbies all the time.
In other games with tons of gamers (COD), having zero SBMM like the old games (Activision claims they did but I call bogus), it's not so bad to have unranked because there's so many players of all skill levels both teams will probably have their share of good and shitty gamers so it kind of balances out. It's not too often you'll get a game all 6 players on one team are experts, and the other 6 all go 5-16.
Also, gear is fair for everyone and unlocks for everyone based on level or doing some shitty objectives like get 10 headshots to unlock an attachment or perk plus. Even level 1 starter loadouts might be decent. You dont need level 50 unlocks to get good gear. In most COD games, the gun I use is often one of the starter guns like M16/M4, DP28 or BRM. Even in Titanfall 1, I used the starter R-101. Many shooters put enough effective gear as default grabs so everyone has a chance. There's no uber advanced purple weapons or shields and no loot drops or stealing/losing gear. So nobody except the biggest W/L or KD whore really cares that much if they lose. It just hurts your career barracks stats a bit, but you know you didnt lose because someone else has stacked gear or they stole yours.
But since the CCU has tanked, having Ranked now gets to a point the good and shitty players might need to be lumped together. If they did Ranked from the start, they'd surely retain gamers more.
But I think what happened is since the game is skewed for the hardcore gamers so much, not caring if the casuals drop off is they cant/wont do Ranked only mode 24/7 because that would piss off all the sweaty gamers who'd complain they cant farm gear and kill enemies in easy lobbies. You already get that enough in some shooters where nobody even loses gear, so just imagine the complaints if all the good gamers played against each other all the time stealing each other's equipment or getting killed right away.
That's why Bungie keeps goofing around adjusting cryo/ranked days on and off or in staggered days. They are trying to find that balance both kinds of players might be happy with because they know 24/7 Unranked or Ranked only will piss off one set of gamers. And going by the CCU trend it's not working what they are doing.
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Rocco Schiavone
Member
rsouzadk
Member
Conflict NZ
Member
Before they turned off regional matchmaking it was taking 10-15 minutes in NZ to find a game with crossplay on, turning it off and you couldn't find a game at all. Now you get games in 5-10 minutes but they are incredibly laggy and as that poster said, anyone on mics is not speaking english.
Also the situation on that sub is hilariously dire. Already people posting "well if it gets shut down at least I got my $40 worth and had a blast". God damn.
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Dr. Samuel Hayden
Member
The sub is basically a cult.
Conflict NZ
Member
So it's on the way down, last week there wasn't a second Sunday peak, just a plateau for an hour starting at 00 UTC. If these numbers hold we could be looking at a <34K Monday.
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ChorizoPicozo
Member
What did I tell you boyx... Gross character design... Gross cosplay
Bernardougf
Member
What did I tell you boyx... Gross character design... Gross cosplay
CrustyBritches
Gold Member
Hollywood Hitman
Gold Member
What did I tell you boyx... Gross character design... Gross cosplay
Absolutely hideous jfc lol this game is the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard
StreetsofBeige
Member
Huge drop today. Peak will be 39.9k.
Compared to yesterday (Sun vs Sat): 39.9k vs 42k (-2,100 or -5%). First time a Sun was less than a Sat, and at -5% which is the usual weekday drop. Sundays are supposed to be its highest peak of the week. At 39.9k, only this past Weds at 39.8k peak was lower and today is a weekend!
Sun vs last Sun: 39.9k vs 53.7k (-13.8k or -26%)
At -26%, this would the worst week over week comparison day since it could be done on Thur March 12 vs 5 which was about -30%.
The low late night tonight should be about 12 to 12.5k. Possible it hits the 11s. The trend last two weeks going from Sun to Mon is -14% each time, so if this happens again tomorrow the peak will be about 34k (39.9k less 14%).
Compared to yesterday (Sun vs Sat): 39.9k vs 42k (-2,100 or -5%). First time a Sun was less than a Sat, and at -5% which is the usual weekday drop. Sundays are supposed to be its highest peak of the week. At 39.9k, only this past Weds at 39.8k peak was lower and today is a weekend!
Sun vs last Sun: 39.9k vs 53.7k (-13.8k or -26%)
At -26%, this would the worst week over week comparison day since it could be done on Thur March 12 vs 5 which was about -30%.
The low late night tonight should be about 12 to 12.5k. Possible it hits the 11s. The trend last two weeks going from Sun to Mon is -14% each time, so if this happens again tomorrow the peak will be about 34k (39.9k less 14%).
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WX3
Member
Been following this thread and just want to commend our guy here StreetsofBeige for the consistent reporting and number crunching making it easier for us dullards to follow along. Salute good sir!
Plague Doctor
Member
Remember when the defense force and shills said the playerbase for Marathon stabilized?
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Timberwolf25
Member
I've noticed lots of people that were streaming the game were playing other titles today. That doesn't mean, they dropped the game completely, but that doesn't bode well.
A lot of them were prior Destiny 2 streamers and some were Halo players that were wanting to get their fps fix on.
At primetime while I was watching other streams, there was only 7K viewers of Marathon too.
All of the above are not good/great signs of success because once you lose the shill/streamers, any sort of hype for the game quickly follows.
StreetsofBeige
Member
Haha. I love numbers.
By the way, looking at the hourly stats, this game was tracking lousy earlier when I did the comparisons. But got worse by day's end.
It looks like when cryo ended at 1 pm est today, the CCU started tracking worse to end at -26%. So it shows the cryo hardcore gamers do boost the CCU (as the stats show). But when it's over it dumps off.
As I said many times, what they need to do is keep cryo around 24/7. All these staggered days do is make many core gamers jump on and off only caring about cryo days. They flipped to Ranked mode at 1 pm. Tanked more so it shows cryo gamers arent sticking around to do Ranked later. As I suspect, what happens is when cryo is over a lot of the gamers play less as they dont want to play regular matches losing their gear to other good gamers. So they'll take a breather and play more when they need to grind back.
So this rise and drop goes against what Ziegler was hoping for which is people play and grind up (retain playing), then jump on cryo days geared up.
Saw this coming a mile away.
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Timberwolf25
Member
Actually, that could explain the low Twitch viewer counts as maybe those streamers were taking a break.
Even before 1pm est, I hadn't noticed the people that were streaming the game playing it though.
StreetsofBeige
Member
Haha.Remember when the defense force and shills said the playerbase for Marathon stabilized?
Wont stabilize given the trend and no big news to change it. No trend goes from -20% week over week stats to suddenly flat on Monday. Stability is when weekly changes go -15%, -10%, -5% etc....
Just about every game does find a stable threshold. Although some do naturally tank to 0. But most known games will hold to something like a couple thousand. Just a matter if Bungie/Sony does nothing that works, what is that bottom threshold of gamers who keep it at a stable number? Nobody knows yet.
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ChorizoPicozo
Member
And just like with the end game map....the next big event will be The Wipe. At this point, I could even see Bungie preemptively doing somehting to lessen its impact on the player base
WX3
Member
Seeing this data and having it presented alongside that actions taking place at Bungie when it comes to these decisions about when the maps will be available for example, is fascinating. Imagine the information that could be learned by other devs and Bungie themselves if they could get from it what would turn the industry around for fucks sake. This action had that consequence. Time and time again they seem to NOT see the point. It is starting to become no surprise how this industry is failing. The culture is fucked. And somebody fucked it up.
StreetsofBeige
Member
Assuming the road map holds true and no big unknown things happen like F2P or a secret PvE mode happens, nothing major is going on till June Season 2 wipe and new nighttime dire marsh map.
So for next 2 months till June, it's a bunch of gameplay tweaks (which included their adjusted matahmaking algorithm) and that's kind of it.
Sony/Bungie IMO will do something big. There's no way for 2 months they let the CCUs keep trending down hoping the June update majorly boosts it back up. Maybe PvE mode is too hard to implement well, so probably 50% off deals or F2P week or something. Maybe even F2P for all in May. Or as a first step, make it a sub plan game on PS+ and Xbox (right there you got 100M potential gamers to download it to test it out and some may stick with it). Time it with upcoming June update.
Also add in Ranked mode for all 24/7. No ifs, ands or buts. This would make any current weak gamers and any newbies join in from above feel better playing against each other and not get wiped out by vets. The game doesnt have enough gamers like a COD game with shitloads of gamers in old games with trashy unranked mode where everyone jumps into the pool and every team is a mish mash of good and weak gamers balancing each other off anyway.
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StreetsofBeige
Member
Problem is game making is a faddish thing. And a decent budget game takes let's say 4-5 years and good money to make. Once studios notice a trend to jump on, they get their money and start making.
It gets to a point there's no turning back to adjust the game. But fast forward 5 years to launch time and that fad might already be trending down or completely over. Gamers arent interested, the game tanks and half the time someone from the studio blames gamers for not buying it.
Well, no gamers ever told all studios to make DEI/Woke-ish games, the millionth hero shooter, or an extraction shooter with neon colours, endless Souls games, endless horror survival games, or going way back..... the million WWII or zombie games. At least it looks like studios learned not to keep churning out WWII and zombie games like a decade or so ago.
But out of all the extraction games, it looks like ARC is the big winner at 14M copies. So dont be surprised if a lot of other studios spend a lot of resources trying to knock off ARC. It's a new genre for the most part (though Tarkov and Hunt have been around forever), but I'm sure some studios right now are itching in their board rooms with ARC taped to the walls.
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StreetsofBeige
Member
That's because the industry has too much money floating around giving studios too much time and funds. Many dont listen to gamers and just make whatever they feel like. If you think of it, who really cares anyway. The industry is very transient where employees rotate companies all the time so whether Marathon does well or not many people who worked on the game are probably already working somewhere else on another game. So whether it succeeds or fails is old news already. They got paid.
Rumours are the game cost $250M. Who knows if that is even true. Even if someone dipped it down to $150-200M, that's still a lot of money. Just to show how stupid it is, consider the situation.
- Let's say about $200M cost to make
- Extraction genre is small. At the time Hunt and Tarkov were the only known games. Hunt sold 6M copies after 6 years. But sales would be much lower years ago. Tarkov who knows how many since it sold with its own launcher
- ARC sold 14M copies but nobody would had known it'd sell this many copies. ARC and Marathon's original launch date were only a month apart
- So at the time before either game launched, the genre wasnt a big seller
- Marathon is even skewed more to hardcore gamers, initially had no solo queue, no prox chat and a crazy art style. Also the graphics were actually worse during last summer's beta. And cryo now is even skewed to harder core gamers (no solo either)
So add it up and based on what was known last year and during development, there is no way anyone could assume an extraction game would sell tons to make back a huge dev budget. Someone could say.... Well, ARC sold 14M copies, so sales were there. Thats hindsight 20/20 because at the time nobody would expect ARC to sell that. Maybe 2M? Maybe 5M? In the ballpark of Hunt? Perhaps. Not 14M. At that amount, youre getting to COD territory.
Marathon would logically be assumed to be a low seller too right from the start. So having a huge dev budget from the start wouldnt even make sense to do unless someone at Sony/Bungie assumed it'd be a giant seller taking over Destiny reins. But Herman and Jim Ryan must had loved it when they bought Bungie believing in 2022 a Marathon extraction game would be huge. Doesnt really make sense. But they still did it.
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falconhoof
Member
Seeing it 10K down on CCU compared to this time yesterday is wild. Also knowing that even this time mid week it was much higher means that this isn't a cause of people going to bed early cause it's work tomorrow.
Bungie has to make the call this week to make Cryo just another standard map. They have to take note of this hit.
Bungie has to make the call this week to make Cryo just another standard map. They have to take note of this hit.
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