Sony is determined to ensure that the marathon does not become another Concord.
In his annual business presentation (via Push Square and Eurogamer), Sony Interactive Entertainment, Hermen Hulst reflects Sony’s recent history on live service gaming, including both Concord’s catastrophic failures and the difficulties facing upcoming marathons.
Looking back at Concord, Halst acknowledged that Concord was not properly “differentiated” to properly “resonate with the players” given the market segment being “very competitive.”
for that, Sony wants to do better in the marathon. Another live service shooter in development, similar to FairGame $.
Is the marathon different?
According to Hulst, Sony learned from their mistakes and “introduced a much more rigorous process to test our creative, commercial, and development assumptions.”
And now we do it on a much more continuous basis. And that’s the plan to ensure you’re investing in the right opportunities at the right time, while maintaining a much more predictable timeline. – Herman Hullst
It was all going well and good, but not smooth sailing for the marathon.
The extraction shooter faces plagiarism over stolen art assets, which reportedly plunged into the morale in Bungee, and what Halst charitably called the “diverse” response to the Alpha.
The Sony Business Presentation listed the marathon as a setting for the 2025 fiscal year release window. This includes the scheduled release date for September 23rd, but ambiguity could suggest that the game could be released in March 2026.
Either on a scheduled date or a wider window, the marathon competes directly with Arc Raiders. This will be a direct competition with Arc Raiders, another extraction shooter that was released on October 30th. This repeated its own controversy when the developer apologised to Studios for misinterpreting the hype on the game’s release date.
Overall, Halst says Sony is working on building a “diverse and resilient” live service game that references not only the marathon but also the robbery game fair game that is behind until 2026 and is known to deal with a set of playtest issues.
This is despite the wave of cancellations of live service projects by Sony over the past year. Maybe it’s part of their “strict process.”
