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A big headline from Sony\u2019s recent earnings call was the news that Bungie was going to start losing some of its independence<\/a> as it gets folded more fully into the PlayStation studios network. What that means for the future of Destiny 2 is unclear and was not discussed, but Bungie\u2019s other multiplayer game, Marathon, did come up.<\/p>\n Marathon\u2019s rollout has been somewhat grim, with initial flashy trailers years earlier giving way to underperforming gameplay previews and a very unfinished, public Alpha that created intensely negative vibes around the project. Added onto that, Bungie found itself in a plagiarism scandal that involved stolen assets being used in the game.<\/p>\n All of this led to a delay where Marathon would be not released this coming September. Now, Sony\u2019s talking about its plans and it seems a bit\u2026up in the air. Here\u2019s what Sony CFO Lin Tao said about the situation:<\/p>\n \u201cFirst, about Marathon, how we factored it in the forecast, we expect the launch to happen within the fiscal year,\u201d Tao said. \u201cBut, having said that, this is not a commitment. No official announcement has been given yet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are now fixing the problems. So we believe this launch will happen. And if this launch is canceled, we need to do the revision of the valuation. However, as of now, this is not expected.\u201d<\/p>\n Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing quite like a company saying \u201cwe believe this launch will happen\u201d to express confidence. The wording here is odd, but this seems to be in reference to the idea that Marathon will be out by March 31, 2026, not the idea that the game may not come out at all, which I don\u2019t believe is even on the table at this point.<\/p>\n The weirder phrase here is that if the launch is cancelled that they will \u201cneed to do the revision of the valuation.\u201d But that seems to be about estimates for revenue, not revising how they value Bungie, or something along those lines.<\/p>\n Marathon is Sony\u2019s highest-profile live service game that\u2019s coming out in the next few years. It\u2019s currently going through a number of closed Alphas, ones that have had relatively few leaks, but from what I\u2019ve seen, it\u2019s shown improvement. The overall test, however, is whether there\u2019s even a market for a hero-based extraction shooter, two rather contrary concepts, and where its audience is meant to come from, pulling away Tarkov players, Destiny players or finding a wholly new audience. All of those are intensely difficult to achieve in this current market.<\/p>\n Will Marathon face another delay? Sony certainly does not seem to be ruling it out. One issue with Marathon is that the game was more or less rebooted under a new director, Joe Ziegler, so the current version is about only two years of work, even if the game has technically been in development for five. It almost certainly needs all the time it can get, and if I were Sony, I wouldn\u2019t worry too much about lost revenue from being outside the fiscal year. It\u2019s going to need to cultivate a lot more potential sales for that to even matter.<\/p>\n Follow me <\/strong>on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>, <\/strong>YouTube<\/strong><\/a>,<\/strong><\/a> and <\/strong>Instagram<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Pick up my sci-fi novels the <\/strong>Herokiller series<\/strong><\/a> and <\/strong>The Earthborn Trilogy<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n