Sony reveals the development progress of "Marathon": the release plan for fiscal year 2025 has not changed

　　At the business department meeting held by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) today, an internal PPT showed that Bungie's new online shooting work "The Lost Starship: Marathon" is still scheduled to be released in the fiscal year 2025 (April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026). This work, which focuses on the gameplay of "Search-Destroy-Extract", is regarded as another ace for Sony to bet on multiplayer service games after the failure of "Star Story".

　　The Marathon, originally scheduled to be released on September 23, 2024, has been controversial since its exposure. Previously, the game was accused of "1:1 plagiarism" by independent artist ANTIREAL. Although the artistic director publicly apologized and admitted his mistakes, the incident has aroused players' doubts about Bungie's creative attitude. What's more serious is that according to insiders, the morale of Bungie employees continues to be sluggish. Some former employees blame the management's "over-commercialization" decision, believing that the studio has shifted from "creatively driven" to "profit-first", and some senior executives have even received high compensation for covering up the scandal.

　　In addition, Sony once planned to cancel the paid marketing budget for "Marathon", further aggravated the outside world's concerns about its development status. Until recently, Bungie urgently appointed a new creative director to take over the project, trying to calm the storm and reorganize the development rhythm.

Although "Marathon" has organized many media trials and its core gameplay is considered to be "basically taken", the actual development progress within Bungie is still a mystery. Some analysts pointed out that the plagiarism storm and team turmoil may have caused substantial delays to the project, while Sony only reiterated the fuzzy plan of "Finance 2025 release" in the meeting, did not clarify the specific schedule, or imply that there are still variables in the project.

The player community's attitude towards this is different: some people believe that the new creative director's appointment may bring a turning point, but more people are worried about "whether Bungie has lost her original intention of creating." An anonymous developer said: "Multiplay service-oriented games require continuous investment, but if the team's morale and reputation collapse, no matter how good the gameplay is, it will be difficult to win back the players."

After the failure of "Star Story", "Marathon" was regarded as the key to Sony and Bungie turning the situation around. However, from allegations of plagiarism to internal management crises to repeated adjustments in marketing budgets, the fate of this game has long exceeded the scope of "on-time release". For Sony, how to rebuild player trust and balance business with creativity may be more urgent than technical debugging. As the player said: "We are willing to wait, but only if the game is worth waiting."