Marathon isn’t going to be the next Concord, according to Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst. In a recent “fireside chat” with investors, Hulst admitted that Concord fell short of Sony’s expectations, but added that the publisher had learned some valuable lessons in the wake of the hero shooter’s disastrous August 2024 launch and subsequent cancellation.
After praising the success of Helldivers 2, Hulst conceded that the publisher had also faced its fair share of challenges in recent months, using Concord as an example, and assuring investors that Sony has made moves to ensure that Marathon — the upcoming first-person extraction shooter from Bungie — won’t face the same fate. Hulst also praised the work that the now-defunct Firewalk Studios put into Concord, citing the competitive nature of the live-service genre and marketing issues as the main culprits behind the game’s failure, which ultimately led to refunds and the closure of Concord’s development studio.
”I think some really good work, actually, went into that title, some really big effort,” Hulst said of Concord. “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. And so we have reviewed our processes in light of this to deeply understand how and why that title failed to meet expectations, to ensure we’re not going to make the same mistakes again.”
Hulst explained that new operating procedures have been implemented at Sony to ensure the publisher doesn’t repeat history when Marathon launches later this year.
“We’ve introduced much more rigorous processes for validating, for re-validating our creative, our commercial, our development assumptions and hypotheses, and we now do that on a much more ongoing basis,” Hulst said. “That’s the plan that will ensure we are investing in the right opportunities at the right time, all while maintaining much more predictable timelines.
“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 admitted that although some of that user feedback has been “varied,” it has also been “super useful” in regard to Marathon’s development.
“That’s why you do this testing,” Hulst explained to investors. “The constant testing, the constant re-validation of assumptions that we just talked about, to me is just so valuable to iterate and to constantly improve the title, so when launch comes, we’re going to give the title the optimal chance of success.”
A former Firewalk Studios developer also seems to agree that Marathon deserves a chance.
“I worked on Concord, and did my best,” the developer shared on Reddit. “We came up short, please don’t punish others for our mistakes.”
Regarding Marathon, the anonymous dev said that they “really didn’t want to be ‘that’ dev, calling attention to myself as if I have a horse in this race,” adding, “But to call [Marathon] a failure before it’s even out is wild to me.”
Marathon is set to launch on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X on Sept. 23.