The Edge Of Fate’ Is Not Make Or Break For Bungie, But ‘Marathon’ Is

There are frequently moments in the history of Destiny 2 that have felt like they’re “make or break” for Bungie, something I myself have said many times. So far, that’s always worked out, most recently with the Final Shape finale that did in fact deliver what it needed to.

Now, we are heading into the new “Frontiers” era of Destiny 2, and that will arrive with the Edge of Fate expansion launching just over a week from now. Being the next phase of Destiny 2 is important, sure, but I’m not willing to declare it “make or break” in the traditional sense.

Why? It comes down to expectations, though I suppose the assumption is that Sony is not expecting some sort of wild overperformance of what Edge of Fate will produce for the series.

This is not an insult to whatever’s coming, but the facts are clear. Destiny 2 is not going to be able to reach the numbers it has previously from here on out, even if its overall peak was justa year ago with The Final Shape. The state of Bungie, the structure of the new era, the state of the playerbase. It’s just not going to happen.

The idea now is that there are two expansions a year, smaller ones, and then no “real” seasons in between them, but rather content updates of medium size. Overall, it will be less content than Destiny 2 has produced in recent years. Again, that should not be a surprise. Bungie is about half the size it used to be after departures, layoffs and recently Sony carving off a chunk of the company to form a studio within PlayStation. And that’s not mentioning the 300 Bungie devs working on Marathon, not Destiny 2 now.

The playercount numbers speak for themselves. In the wake of the final shape, we’ve seen all-time low concurrents, which are no doubt close to reflected on console. This had to be expected, given that the decade-long Light and Darkness era of the game ended with The Final Shape, and there was inevitably going to be a sharp drop-off after that.

I did the math the other day based on the playercount multiplying from baseline to the peak of an expansion release. It’s about a 3x multiplier, and that worked to show how Witch Queen, Lightfall and The Final Shape all got around 300,000 players at release. But using the same metric, my numbers say that The Edge of Fate may be closer to a 115,000 peak, given the current playercount drop-off. Fewer, if Edge of Fate is less appealing than those other releases.

Despite some major system overhauls, this was never going to be Destiny 3. If a full sequel like that did launch and bomb, that would be a different story. But the writing is on the wall that Destiny 2 must, shift into a lower-scale production mode. That has to be the expectation, and Bungie will just have to work with what they have and hope that this new baseline works well enough to keep the game going.

Marathon is a different story.

Marathon is no doubt one of the reasons that Sony picked up Bungie for billions in the first place, as the first new PvP shooter game from Bungie in over a decade was a very big deal and the kind of thing you’d want spearheading your new live service push.

This is a project that Bungie has worked on for 5-6 years now in some form or another, albeit recent reboots put it more like two years making this current version set to release some time in the next 6-7 months or so after a recent delay.

Given the state of Destiny 2 and how it’s inevitably going to be attracting less players, Marathon has to be a hit. I’ve said previously that an expectation is that it needs to chart pretty high on NPD sales to be considered a hit, much less revenue targets for its microtransactions (which have not been publicly previewed yet).

The narrative around Marathon after recent previews has been dismal, there’s no real way around that. The term “Concord 2” was thrown around, referencing Sony’s historic misfire of a live PvP game that had so few players it shut down in two weeks.

It seems unlikely that Marathon is going to perform that poorly. But there is a wide range between one of the worst game releases of all time and actually being a hit. My prediction is that the runway for Marathon would be at least a year, which would allow the game to grow and evolve and attempt to draw in more players in time, even if it does start with a small playerbase (which is likely going to be the case now). Early, now NDA-ed tests (through leaks) now show signs of improvement, but debating the quality of the game should probably be saved until the next public test at this point, as it has been talked to death (by me especially) already.

Bungie will be fine if Destiny 2’s Frontiers era is just okay, but Marathon is a big hit. Bungie will not be fine if Destiny 2’s Frontiers era is just okay, and Marathon is a huge bomb. The consequences of that happening would be catastrophic, something both outside the company and those within it understand. There are two levels of expectations for Destiny and Marathon going forward, and one is more key than the other at this point.

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