During an annual Sony business presentation, CEO Hermen Hulst stated the company remains committed to building “a diverse and resilient” portfolio of live service games, which includes the unreleased Marathon and Fairgames. That’s despite high profile live service failures, in addition to controversy with these two forthcoming games.
Hulst stated that Sony is building on the successes of games such as Helldivers 2 and Destiny 2 for future projects, adding: “We look forward to showcasing our progress with Marathon”, a game that has seen no shortage of controversy recently.
Helldivers 2, the large jewel in Sony’s live service crown, was dubbed a “resounding critical and commercial success” by Hulst, who highlighted both its ability to retain a passionate community and win industry awards.
Hulst called Marathon “innovative and bold”. No other compliments were offered to Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter, though the accompanying slide noted “strong early engagement” as its prime achievement so far.
An interesting perspective to be sure, at least as far as Marathon is concerned. While much of what Hulst said about Helldivers 2 is true – the game has managed to remain a fantastic success story for the industry giant – Marathon has found itself on the receiving end of some exceptional problems.
The “strong early engagement” noted in the presentation doesn’t reflect the available player figures for the games’ closed alpha. During this short-lived test, Marathon shed roughly 80 percent of its initial alpha playerbase. As far as engagement via discussion, Marathon’s many problems dominated the conversation, such as its locked three-player format and lack of feasible solo mode, repetitive nature, lack of crucial extraction shooter features such as proximity voice, and more.
One of the biggest merits of Marathon was its aesthetic, which soon soured due to an art plagiarism scandal. Bungie admitted to the use of external art in the games development process, blaming it on a former employee and committing to a full audit of in-game assets in order to remove any stolen work. This situation would reportedly send morale at Bungie into “free fall”.
Then we have Fairgames, which hasn’t been shown off much since its initial reveal. A co-operative heist game, it was recently delayed due to studio founder Jade Raymond departing for greener pastures. This came following worrying external tests, according to a report from Bloomberg.
According to Raymond in a 2022 Gamesindustry.biz article, “more than 30 percent of the studio is currently working on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cloud-based dev tools”, technology that has proven divisive in recent years. Not to mention what could possibly be the most devastating hit to Fairgames yet: the removal of the dollar sign from its title.
It is clear that, despite uncertainty surrounding Sony’s upcoming live service releases, the company wishes to remain entrenched in the space. Or, at the very least, to appear confident in its continued presence in the world of live service. It’s worth noting the full record of Sony’s venture into live service, which includes the legendary blunder Concord, a cancelled live service God of War project, The Last of Us Online, and more. Sony, which initially wanted to release 12 live service games by March 2026, has cut that figure down to six.
Sony’s single-player output however has proven a far better offering for PlayStation fans. Earlier in this presentation, Hulst highlighted releases such as Astro Bot, God of War: Ragnarok, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Describing such releases as “a core strength” for Sony, it appears as though this style of game has proven more successful overall for the company.