Marathon is increasingly looking like it’s going to be marched out to its death whenever PlayStation decides to rip off the band-aid and finally announce a release date. Not only was opinion mixed on the title before this year, but underwhelming playtests and a pretty massive plagiarism scandal have turned the mood around the game more negative than ever.
Understandably, the game has now begun to invoke memories of PlayStation’s biggest live-service disaster ever, when it released Concord in 2024, only for it to be removed from sale and have its developer shut down within the span of a single month. Even in Marathon’s gameplay reveal trailer that went up a couple of months ago, the top comment reads “Concord 2 is coming along nicely”.
PlayStation Boss Says Marathon Won’t “Make The Same Mistakes” As Concord
To try and get the ship on the right course again, Hermen Hulst – CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group – recently conducted an interview with investors (thanks IGN), during which he was asked what Sony and PlayStation has learned from Concord, and how they’ll use the lessons to make sure Marathon doesn’t suffer the same fate.
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“We have reviewed our processes in light of this to deeply understand how and why [Concord] failed to meet expectations and to ensure we’re not going to make the same mistakes again,” says Hulst.
“For Marathon, it’s our goal to release a very bold, 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. We’re monitoring, we’re going through the test cycles. We’re monitoring the closed alpha cycle the team has just gone through. We’re taking all the lessons learned, we’re using the capabilities we’ve built and analytics and user testing to understand how audiences are engaging with the title.”
Hulst also states that he believes Concord failed because the game was “insufficiently differentiated” in a “hyper-competitive segment of the market”, which, translated from corpo talk, essentially means ‘Concord was too generic’. It’s a criticism that was shared by many at the time, though that wasn’t the sole reason why the game bombed.
Of course, it’s also worth noting that Hulst is speaking to investors, so it’s not like he’s going to say that Marathon is doomed and there’s little faith in the title. It at least sounds as though Hulst knows why Concord was so spectacularly despised, so there is some hope there that Marathon will avoid the same issues.
Marathon
- Released
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September 23, 2025
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer
- Franchise
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Marathon
