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We've seen a lot of understandable worrying, mostly from pvp players, that Destiny's recent troubles stem from ferrying talent and resources away from Destiny for Bungies new shooter Marathon chasing the Extraction Shooter fad.
Mostly its doomposting worrying that if Marathon is a success then Destiny will be abandoned. Which is understandable of course. wouldn't be the first game to see a success kill off something that came before it. There were dozens of Fortnite save the world enjoyers back in the day, dozens!
But what i haven't seen brought up much is what if Marathon doesn't become a monster hit for Bungie. A fair few devs have looked at Hunt Showdown, Escape from Tarkov and to a lesser extent a mode in Call of Duty Warzone and assumed this was the next big trend after Battle Royale. So you pump your game out, hope the streamers pick it up and sell it to the zoomers and you make bank on battlepasses and cosmetic cash shop "funpay minibuys". Its not the first time its happened and it won't be the last.
The thing is much like how we saw a wave of swiftly announced then shutdown battle royales when that fad began to die outside of the couple of firmly established giants -anyone who remembers The Culling 2 knows how insane that turn over failure rate got by the end- we are already seeing similar happen to Extraction Shooters. Hunt and Tarkov have been the established brands for years and Call of Duty is, well, Call of Duty. Cliff Blezinski once said theres only room for 3 big games in a genre and in the grand tradition of a broken clock being right twice a day he has been pretty on the money in this regard and i dont think thats out of the realm of possibility here.
Just the other day Extraction Shooter "The Cycle: Frontier" announced it was already shutting down "because the extraction shooter model simply is not profitable enough" and publishers known for their wallet fleecing strategies like Nexon have shot down questions about Extraction Shooters with an interest in sticking with survival shooters instead along with companies like Tencent hedging their bets and also putting money into things like Undawn as well. It seems to suggest the sub genre might be more niche than the numbers publishers will demand for success or those "first big three games" are already established and its too late.
Don't get me wrong i like the visual style we see of Marathon and the idea of Bungie taking a crack at it is interesting enough. But i think people are so worried, understandably mind you, about Marathon taking off and replacing destiny but not really talking about what happens if it doesn't do well at all.
With the rocky reception to Lightfall and players sounding like they are ready to drop destiny after the Final Shape wraps up "the ten year saga" and acts like a jumping off point -something many did with FFXIV's Endwalker finale and that was a game with a lot more goodwill than bad at the time- where its 'safe' to break a habit and leave for greener pastures i can only imagine the mood at Bungie right now as they are watching that on the Destiny end while this sub genre where publishers hoped the next Fortnite level success was to be found already appears to be floundering and dying off.
What do you think happens if Marathon doesn't pop off? whats your take on it and how Destiny is affect then?
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