Bungie Can't Say We Didn't Warn Them

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]They can't say we didn't warn them is the top trending video in the topic of Bungie, Destiny 2, and Marathon right now. A day ago, let's see what we're cooking up here.

[00:00:10]>> Oh man, you know, I thought things were bad, but I didn't know they were this bad. And they're a lot worse than what people are telling you guys right now.

[00:00:17]You know, Sony has to feel scammed. You know, wool pulled over their eyes, sold snake oil, fortune nearly a billion dollars off the books because they bought two failed live service games instead of one. What a bargain. Surely it can't get any worse. Well, I've looked into it and of course it does.

[00:00:33]>> Oh man.

[00:00:34]>> Predictable. That's all I can say.

[00:00:36]>> Straight for the jugular. Dude, this is this is brutal. Buying two failing live service games instead of one. The bargain. The two for one deal. The BOGO deal.

[00:00:44]>> It's the best thing that I can say. When you have audiences that are as loud as the people that have been around Bungie or Destiny or Marathon or hell, any other game right now, these guys, the players warned you. All the signs were there. you had all the information that you needed, but you just refused to listen.

[00:01:01]>> Thank you.

[00:01:01]>> And while I do think that it looks like Marathon's starting to make some of the right choices, >> that only came after you were financially incentivized by the audience to do so. And that's definitely not the way that things should go. This industry is just they're so obsessed with reaching audiences that they just refuse to understand. They don't want to listen to you. They see you more as market share than they actually see you as people. And I don't think this is something that is just limited to Bungie or Sony. I think this is everywhere right now. I think a lot of the burn money and the failed live service games, just failed games in general that we've seen over the past couple of years are because of this. I think Bungie is the cost of that blindness. The fact that these guys just don't want to see you as people. They only want to see you as a consumer. So today, I want to talk about how Sony has torched nearly a billion dollars off the books because of Bungie.

[00:01:53]I want to talk about the fate of Marathon and Destiny and how an industry that is so obsessed with getting our money refuses to understand the people that spend it. I'll be real with you guys. With the news cycle kicking into high gear, the stacked release schedule ahead of us, Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks that have been pumping, and Summer Games Fest right around the corner, I'd almost all but forgotten about Marathon. And it seems like just about everybody else has, too. despite the games defenders and games media trying to sell it off as something more than what it actually was. Some game that was just destined for greatness that we just couldn't see yet. But in my eyes and in the eyes of a lot of other players, this game was just destined for failure. Bungie just flat out abandoned their audience with Destiny to go and make this new game and this new audience that was never theirs to begin with with Marathon. And then they just made this game that was incredibly niche for an incredibly niche audience. And this was just always going to end the same way. And what was the result of that? Well, Marathon launched to a peak of 88,000 players, started declining within its first week, and it just never recovered from that. Instead, it just cascaded downwards, now hovering around 12,000 players, down nearly 90% from their launch. A number, mind you, that you just flat out cannot survive as a live service. It's just not possible, especially >> Thank you for saying that. It's nice to hear this from others that are completely independent, you know, gaming. I mean, I guess he's not a journalist, but he's, you know, he's a well-informed YouTuber that understands the gaming industry. His entire channel is about understanding the trends and what is happening within the games industry and identifying that this is just simply not sustainable and that Marathon basically doesn't have a future unless Sony decides to pump a ton of more money into it. And even still, that's just a risky gambit that may not work out, likely won't, right? That's where we're at with it. Like basically, we're just pumping more money into this thing in the hopes that it maybe breathes life for its first time ever in season 2, but it's very unlikely with how much money they invested into this game and even more so when you consider how many developers Bungie has and how much those guys are actually getting paid. So now Bungie has gone all hands on deck trying to save this new game.

[00:03:58]While support for Destiny 2 has grinded to a halt, showing those players exactly who they find more important and causing that game to tank just the same. Two failures for the price of one. That's not a deal that I would take, but it's one that Sony has, and somehow it has only gotten worse. During their most recent earnings call, Sony announced a $565 million impairment loss against Bungie, which combined with the $200 million impairment loss they took last year now comes to the tune of $765 million. Sony's CFO stated, "Earnings from Bungie's title portfolio did not meet our expectations. So, we downwardly revised our business plan and impaired the full amount of the fixed assets related to Bungie except for Goodwill."

[00:04:39]So, the whole reason that I made this video is because this is actually a lot worse than what people are letting on right now. Because I'm sure not a lot of people are spending their free time trying to brush up on their accounting lingo. Fixed assets are things like software engines, the physical assets.

[00:04:52]Goodwill is the brand. Bungie's games have flopped now to such a degree that Sony is forced to admit that those assets that they had purchased are no longer worth what they paid for, wiping nearly a billion dollars off the books.

[00:05:04]And now by impairing the full amount towards Bungie's fixed assets, the games themselves, the studio, the engine, the developers, Sony has basically put their back against the wall. If there is further, >> I think it's fascinating when we talk about the value of the assets. When we talk about Bungie specifically, it would be interesting to see what the value of Destiny 2 is independent of Bungie or Marathon independent of Bungie. I imagine it's got to be like the majority of the 3.6 billion though, right? like like Destiny has to be a $3 billion IP I imagine and then Marathon is the other 6 billion maybe I I don't I'm trying to decide which one it is because there's obviously more factors than just that but you know Destiny as an IP can exist in and of itself without Bungie like they can make a whole studio just like they did with Halo they can make a whole studio just for making and developing Destiny 2 so I wonder what its value is and I wonder how much it actually burned during during this period of time where they had to delay the Shadow and Order update and all of that because it feels like that number, it's obviously the majority of it comes from Marathon, let's be real. But it feels like that number is very ambiguous right now. We don't understand why Bungie's total evaluation number has gone down so much.

[00:06:17]And you know, which game is really burning more cash and or at least how much has Destiny 2 been burning, I guess, is just a question I'm curious about because mostly it comes to mismanagement from them. I'm not saying that Destiny 2 sucks so much that it deserves to burn that much money.

[00:06:33]Obviously, I like the game quite a bit and I think it's a game that could make a ton of money if it was managed right, but it hasn't been managed right. So, how much is it burning right now? I'm curious. And then obviously the other projects were involved in that where they said gummy bears and project payback and maybe even some other stuff.

[00:06:48]So maybe those were a part of that evaluation. But it's interesting to see and I would like to know a separate evaluation of the two IPs independent of Bungie. I'd be curious to know what those numbers would be. Impairment down the road. They are going to have to go against goodwill to the value of the Bungie name itself, the brand itself, and their reputation as a studio, which would then ultimately be the admission that this acquisition was a complete failure and would likely lead to the dissolution of the studio or very, very significant downsizing. All of which I think was completely avoidable. Yes, >> I think a good chunk of the animosity that we see today from players is largely just coming down to the fact that they are not being listened to. And also how often these publishers and studios just deny reality that's right in front of them. Nobody wants to give us the time a day, but they still expect every single penny out of our bank accounts. And the more that that continues to happen, the fewer changes that we see in our favor, the worse things are going to keep getting. And ultimately, it's just going to end in failure. I am just so sick of these self-inflicted wounds. I mean, both Sony and Bungie ignored so many warning signs on the way to get here that it is genuinely mind-blowing how they still ended up in this position. You know, before Sony even acquired Bungie, financial analysts were telling them that it was a bad deal. Michael Ptor told Sony that they had vastly overpaid, that they were paying around $4 million per developer when most deals were closing at around $250 to a million. He contrasted that with EA buying Respawn for $700 million when that studio was already making $700 million while Bungie at the same time was only making around $200 million while Sony was buying them for 3.6 billion. It just didn't make any sense. And in his view, the entire deal >> that comparison is crazy in terms of the numbers. Wow.

[00:08:35]>> Felt directionalist. It felt like it was made out of desperation because Microsoft had just bought Activision.

[00:08:41]And man, was this dude right. This was a company with no plan that was buying another studio with no plan.

[00:08:48]>> Yeah, it was made out of desperation. We know that. We know that Microsoft evaluated Bungie and said that they had a higher burn rate, so they weren't even interested in buying them. Had Microsoft actually bought Bungie, they probably would have bought them closer to that EA price. And we'll have to do the math of it, but it would probably be closer to what, a billion dollars,$ two billion dollars. They wildly overpaid for them.

[00:09:09]wildly overpaid for them in a desperation move to try and have some semblance of a live service portfolio for their platform and it didn't work out. They they could have wildly overpaid and it could have been a massive success. You know, you have these power players on your team now with this sort of live service expertise that is irreplaceable by anyone else in the games industry. Unfortunately, that is not what they bought, right? We can look back now in hindsight and see like, yeah, they that's not what they got, unfortunately. And so they just wildly overpaid for this. It's crazy. It's crazy how much, especially when you compare it to that EA numbers.

[00:09:44]>> I need you guys to understand the stupidity in all this. Like, try to make this make sense to me. You are Bungie.

[00:09:49]You have an audience that you've attracted for over a decade through Destiny, a live service MMO that, while it does have PvP, you guys have largely stopped supporting it, making the primary audience for the game overwhelmingly PvE. They like dungeons.

[00:10:01]They like raids. They like stories. And then when it comes down to you making your next game, you get the bright idea that you're going to make something that that audience is never going to be interested in. And on top of that, you're also going to effectively halt support for Destiny 2 while you support this new game, leaving that audience hung out to dry while you have no allies. You are either dumb enough to make a game with no interest in retaining the customers that you already have or you made a game that was actively trying to ignore them, assuming they would either buy anyway or you just didn't mind losing them if they didn't want to buy it. That is quite literally the only explanation here because it's not like Bungie or Sony could be surprised by any of this.

[00:10:40]>> Yes. from the moment >> and it's just in terms of a strategic move and positioning and understanding what value you have in the community you have. This is just a a nightmarish decision that was only going to end in disaster and we predicted it before it came out and of course everything has lined up perfectly. So it's like no surprises here but it's crazy that they just kept going forward with it that Marathon released. Everybody let out a collective sigh when they realized that this game was going to be a hero-based extraction shooter with no PvE. Like, how generic can you get? Why do you guys have to keep forcing this one single mode on everybody right now? What is with the obsession with it? Whether it was Reddit threads, journalists, content creators, everybody was skeptical of this game from day one. And these guys never acted on any of it. Everybody kept asking whether there was going to be any PvE in the game. It came up again after their technical test when people were begging for it. Then you had all the time in the world after the art scandal to act on it. Sony delayed the game indefinitely. Again, they did nothing about it. They ignored another warning instead. When the server slam came and you had 140,000 people that showed up to play your game and they lost half of those players over the weekend when people had the most time to play the game when the game was free to play.

[00:11:51]Free. How do you lose people when the game is free? Because they don't want to play it. Bungie heard all of it. They saw the relevant data. They released it regardless. And they have found nothing but failure. In fact, these guys are failing so hard that it's likely going to end up killing both of their games.

[00:12:06]>> Damn, >> LD, why would you say that? That's a bold claim to make. I don't really think it's all that bold because PlayStation cannot let go of Marathon. And because they can't let go of it, it's going to destroy everything that they have, at least with Bungie. They can't let go of it because they can't bury another live service game prematurely. Not with how many failures they've already had, not with how high profile of a failure Concord was, not with how much money they put into this game, and also with the impairment losses that they've taken against Bungie. Sony would have PlayStation's head because the investors would have Sony's head because of how much of a reputational hit that would take to the company and how incompetent it makes these guys look. So, they are going to invest in Marathon. That is where their focus is going to be. And yes, by the way, before anybody says anything, I do know that Marathon is going to be making a PVE only mode. But that's the problem. They're overinvesting. They're putting all hands on deck when it comes to trying to save this game and get it a heartbeat or at least the best they possibly can. And in doing so, they're ignoring Destiny.

[00:13:09]They're pushing back its content. That content is likely to be weaker or thinner or just worse in some way. And I think that Destiny, this might be a crazy thing to say. I think that Destiny is the winning horse in this race.

[00:13:22]>> Let's go. That's what I'm talking about, baby. That's what I'm saying. We actually had a clip that was trending where we were talking about this and it was like Asminold and Asdross and Paul Tassy all agreed and I agreed too that Destiny is the better IP. when you had to when you if you had to sit them both down and say which one are we going to put our attention on Destiny 2 is the better ID IP and I said it's unanimous and they they tried to roast me on Twitter about it and now here we have another person weighing in on it another person that has this opinion I'm telling you by and large as an outsider looking in if you had to pick between these two IPs if you had to decide which one is the better one which one is the money-making one which one has a better future Destiny 2 from a financial standpoint is the one. Destiny 2 is the better selection here. And it's not because Marathon has no chance of ever making any money necessarily. I mean, I don't know. I'm very skeptical of that game. But those two comparing to each other, it's a crazy tough comparison.

[00:14:24]And Destiny 2 is the better one though.

[00:14:26]Destiny is better. That's it. Another person, another This guy doesn't even play Destiny. He's just looking at the two from an outsider and he can tell which one he thinks is the better one.

[00:14:34]So, I like this. I like that. I don't think I've seen anyone besides the deranged marathon people on Twitter advocate for marathon continuing and Destiny dying. Like other than them, every other content creator and journalist and long-term, you know, insider that well, like understands a gaming community well understands that Destiny is the better option.

[00:14:55]>> And they're letting that horse just go out to greener pastures, bigger name, already established. You have audiences that are already invested into it. Keep in mind that Marathon is a premium game.

[00:15:05]So fixing Marathon might bring the players back, but you still have to push copies. And that's something that Marathon hasn't done since day one.

[00:15:14]>> This isn't going to fix that problem. It might bring a few players in, but not nearly as many as they need to be able to save this game. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Backwards engineering Marathon to be Destiny 3 >> just is definitely not the route for these guys to go, even though there's been some people that have been talking about it. And the reason why I say that is because this game was never designed to be that. So, it's going to be a weaker experience because of it. And just getting Destiny 2 to be profitable again is just a hell of a lot easier than trying to ri Sorry, trying to revive Marathon at this point. It gives these guys the time to be able to figure things out. That's what they should be doing. That's not to say they should completely abandon Marathon, but that's what these guys are doing. They they basically can only weigh on one side or the other. Only one of these games can survive right now. If I had to pick, it would be Destiny 2. And then you can figure things out with marathon or figure out if you need to walk away from it. But that makes way too much sense.

[00:16:08]That's not what these guys are going to do because that's leading in the direction of where the players are and what the players would actually want from them. And you're not a part of this conversation. You never have been.

[00:16:19]You're nebulous. You're a number on a spreadsheet. And the minute that I started thinking about that is the minute that I realized how much worse this is going to get.

[00:16:28]>> Yeah.

[00:16:28]>> The one thing that has struck me >> I genuinely agree with this. It's about to get really, really bad because the sunken cost fallacy is deep for Sony right now. They're like, we're 250 million in. So, what's another 50 million, 100 million? Let's see if we can get this thing a heartbeat like you mentioned. And I don't know. I'm skeptical, man. I don't think it's going to happen for Marathon, unfortunately. I think it's it's already written off by most people. odd about this whole situation is that Sony and Bungie seem to think that they have time. Seem to think that they have patience with the players. But patience, I think, is like the last thing that anybody has left for Bungie. I've covered this in the past, but these guys have torched their reputation and goodwill so much that I honestly think that they don't have much of either one left anymore. Years of some of the most blatantly egregious monetization that we have seen in the industry. Heck, these guys have been the key leaders in normalizing a lot of the stuff that we've seen today. faulting players content that they had paid for, outright removing content that players had paid for, constantly taking more while rarely giving anything back, jading their own audience against them in the process just to abandon them at Destiny's lowest point. I can kind of understand why Bungie would be chasing a fresh start with a new audience. but diving head first into a new genre, reviving a dead IP with little support with existing player bases, and then doing all of that to carry on one of the worst reputations in the industry is just it's so incredibly self-destructive, such a pre-ordained failure that I can't help but wonder what both Sony and Bungie were thinking when it came to this. And I just kind of came to the realization that I don't think they are. No, like seriously, I don't think for a single second that these guys have ever considered their wider reputation in the games industry.

[00:18:11]What people think of them, how content their players are, or whether or not they would even actually have any support for their next game. How you feel, what you think, and what you're interested in is just not a part of the process.

[00:18:21]>> And it's interesting about this is that even after burning these bridges and like crushing the reputation, they did a poll of Destiny 2 or how many marathon players played Destiny 2 and it was still 78%. So, there's a level of, you know, not to be mean to people watching this right now, but there's a level of like it doesn't matter what Bungie does.

[00:18:40]They could literally spit on you and you'd still be like, "All right, [ __ ] it. I'll I'll buy the next DLC." You know what I'm saying? Like, there is a level of that to some degree. And it sucks that it's like that. I mean, ultimately, we're just playing games, right? So, let's be real here. If a game's fun, we're going to play the game. But, it sucks when things are mismanaged in such a way where you feel like you're disrespected and then they say, "Well, you know, here's a shiny new toy. are you going to buy it? And then we barked for it anyways, right? It's it sucks that it's like that. I know that a lot of you have voted with your wallet and you just said, you know, I'm not buying Marathon. I'm not doing it.

[00:19:13]That's your decision to make. And a lot of you, you know, bought it anyways or maybe are having fun playing it. Maybe you don't care about some of the conversations and the things that are happening in the back end with Bungie's communication. But it is a fascinating topic of Bungie's perception of how much it matters what people think of them because it would seem as though they think it doesn't matter if everyone thinks they're like shitty company or something, right? Because ultimately making a good game will sell no matter what. And there is a degree of that, especially in capitalistic society. Like if you just make a dope game, people will probably forget about everything.

[00:19:48]People be like, "That game was dope." So that's that's a that's kind of where they land with it. It sucks because you can make both things happen. You can have good communication and and nurture your community that enjoys your games and also make dope games. You don't really have to do this like polarizing one or the other. It's it's a fascinating predicament we're in. And it's interesting hearing it from outsiders talking about it. Looking in outsiders looking in and this is the way they perceive us and Bungie and the community.

[00:20:14]>> And the process is the only thing that matters to these guys. Looking at the history of Destiny and all of its expansions is going to tell you as much.

[00:20:21]Hell, it's been the cornerstone of their business for years. Justin Truman talked about this at GDC in his infamous train analogy where he explained that Bungie had to quite literally train the company out of the mindset of overd delivering, of doing more that's expected of them.

[00:20:35]He talked about how Miyamoto was wrong when he had said that a bad >> a delayed game is eventually good. A bad game is bad forever.

[00:20:42]>> Game is bad forever. How Bungie has to stop their developers from adding something cool or delivering extra content even when they could. even when they had the ability to because it might set them back in their release schedule or because it might end up making the players expect more from them as a result. I think that this mindset fully explains the position that these guys are in right now and it explains modern Bungie and honestly a lot of the games industry at this point. But I don't think that these guys understand just how pervasive and toxic this idea of never overd delivering actually is. Like yes, it's going to threaten you with crunch. Yes, it's going to wear out your developers. Yes, you're going to end up paying for it later. But those moments where you blow players minds are the exact moments that matter the most. That is hit creation. That is what this industry is driven by. That is the moment that you turn a customer into a fan. That is the moment that people start buying your games because they trust your experiences because they believe that you're about to do some work that nobody else can do.

[00:21:39]>> But these guys are prioritizing welming their audience. Who makes that their goal? Why would you do that? Especially in video games. This entire industry is built around swinging for the fences and this mentality is now completely baked into their corporate structure down to a developer level. The idea of never overd delivering, never overextending applies to their own people. I mean it is their number one core tenant on their hiring page. Worldclass people, worldclass teams. We hold ourselves and each other to the highest standard of mutual respect, inclusivity, and support.

[00:22:08]knowing that team members who speak their minds and take risks will accomplish what no individual ever could. Our wins are always team wins.

[00:22:18]And then their third one is we know that our first idea will never be our best.

[00:22:22]Constant improvement means setting egos aside, sharing ideas early and often and offering constructive feedback with open hearts and minds. Ah, so your philosophy is to neuter your staff while getting rid of individuality in a creative field. Genius. Really? Creative industries are full of egos. They have to be. At some point, you have to have somebody in the room that has an idea that they feel is worth fighting for.

[00:22:45]Somebody has to be stubborn enough to say, "No, this is the thing. This is what makes this special. This is what we have to do, and we're going to do it that way." Obviously, ego can become toxic in some cases. Obviously, it can get out of control. But trying to strip it out of the process entirely is exactly how you end up stripping out any conviction or identity in any of your games. Great games do not come from everyone politely just handing around their ideas in a circle until nobody really feels all that attached to anything. And now when you go and you pair this with their studio philosophy built around overd delivering and never overd delivering, what are we even doing here? Don't get too ambitious. Don't push too hard. Don't try to surprise the players with too much because they might expect more from you later. Set your ego aside. Feed the process. Keep the train moving. And these guys are sitting around wondering why audiences feel like nobody on the other side actually gives a [ __ ] You created a culture that is terrified of the one thing that people love games for in the first place.

[00:23:43]Something unexpected, something unique, something creative, something individual.

[00:23:48]I've always said that the games industry has a leadership issue and now Justin Truman is head of this studio. So, it makes a lot of sense why these would be their core tenants, why this would be their belief, why this would be their plan or direction. You now have years of underdelivering, years of refusing to listen, years of neutering your own developers, and it's all finally catching up with these guys. The trains may be on time, but what happens when nobody's left at the station? Justin, something I don't think that these guys have taken >> that trains are on time, but what happens when nobody's left at the station? [ __ ] >> The time to think about is just what happens when you continue to underdel?

[00:24:23]What happens when you care more about the process than you do the game or the developers or the players themselves?

[00:24:28]Well, you constantly are putting yourself a step behind. You might be getting your content out on time. You might not be crunching, but you're constantly losing interest and reputation every single step of the way, which means the next leap that you have to take to find any win is basically just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger until eventually you reach a point where there's just no recovery to be had. Instead of taking the train, your customers have now found another mode of transportation. These guys have moved on to other games, other communities, and a lot of these guys are probably never coming back. When I look around the games industry, I think some of the most successful games that we're seeing right now are single player games. And I think a huge reason for that is because those games are built around the idea that they need to blow your mind the minute that you press play. They have to be the game that has everything that you could dream of and more. And those studios and publishers are throwing everything they can at the wall just to get your attention. It's all gas, no breaks. Look at something like Crimson Desert. Those guys just keep adding more and more content to their game because that's what it takes to make a game successful. That's what it takes to keep players happy. You're not trying to manage them. You're trying to win them over. I think that Bungie has built a culture of failure. And if they were still operating with a hit mentality, if they were still looking to be a blockbuster studio, if they were letting their developers be more expressive, if they actually listened to their audience instead of treating them like a problem to manage, I don't think that they would even be in this position that they're in today. You have two failed live service games, two objective failures, a fan base that you guys have spent years grinding down, and an internal culture that is built around underdelivering. How exactly are you supposed to recover from that? You either go all in on marathon while Destiny >> when he says it like that, you realize how cooked we are. Holy crap.

[00:26:10]>> Continues to spiral and you risk losing both games. You pivot to Destiny and now you're effectively admitting that you've spent the last several years completely wasting your time. There is just no clean way out for these guys because every single decision that these guys have made has been without the audience in the room. You cannot build your future while treating the people who decide it like an afterthought. As crazy as it may sound, I do actually hope that this game recovers, though I don't actually believe that's going to be the case. But I hope that the PVE update delivers exactly what the game needs and it ends up being really good and exactly what people actually want from the game and they find success from it because well, to be honest with you, man, I'm actually kind of sick of seeing a lot of these games die and a lot of the players just not getting anything from it.

[00:26:52]They're the ones that are suffering the most from this. While these companies are definitely suffering a lot financially, the players are also suffering as a result. And that's the part that probably bothers me the most.

[00:27:01]But I just don't think that these guys can recover from it. And even if they do, they're likely just to find themselves in the exact same position. I mean, look at where they are right now.

[00:27:10]They can barely even support both games at the exact same time. Actually, they can't seem to support both games at the exact same time. And I read through a lot of the notes where they were talking about the updates and the changes that they're going to make. They're talking about wanting to make sure that they can integrate all these new features by season 5. It's not even season two yet.

[00:27:28]You realize that Marathon, sorry. You real You realize that Highguard had a one-year road map, right? you guys don't have as much time as you think. I think these guys think they can play the long game, but I really don't think that they have that much time. This game just doesn't have that kind of >> I actually like that a lot. The idea of referencing a season 5, it sounds good in terms of a a longevity, but really what you want is an immediate forsaken level push as fast as possible, right?

[00:27:53]You don't have as much time as you think. And he's he's really in this guy gets it first off. This guy absolutely gets it. They don't have as much time as they they seem to be thinking. They're like, "Oh yeah, we're going to add a PVE light mode and this and that, you know, some a new character and everything will be fine in season 2." I I really think that it should be handled in a much different way. And you're going to we're going to find out pretty soon here, right? We're going to find out pretty soon when this that season 2 launches and the launch numbers and what happens.

[00:28:22]But they're handling it wrong, you know?

[00:28:24]And it makes sense they would handle it wrong. Of course, they've handled everything up to this point wrong. So, how would they suddenly figure it out right now? Right? It's just of course they're of course it's going to spell disaster season 2. But it's very refreshing to hear what he thinks what the actual solutions would be. And maybe it's not obtainable for Bungie. Maybe they don't have the budgeting or the the possibility to make that happen. Uh you either make these things happen in a an immense effort that is you know honestly you know basically climbing up a hill like an impossibly steep hill or you just you just give up because I don't think that you know from what we just saw from the new enemy type that was just introduced it's just a it's just a box floating in the sky that you shoot at. It's like there's nothing there like it's just it's not really not anything new. It's not innovating. you know, the player population is still dwindling.

[00:29:15]Like, no one cares about the new enemy type. And it's it seems like a lot more of that same stuff is about to drop. And I just don't think anyone's going to care. And I think that the season 2 numbers for Marathon are going to be pretty illuminating to how much people just don't really care. And I could be wrong. And I honestly I hope I'm wrong.

[00:29:30]And I hope, you know, Legendary Drops is wrong, too. And maybe season 2 is a massive success and a crazy growth in terms of population and everything, but it ain't shaping up to look like that from the optics right now. It's looking like it's about to be a very flat launch. So, we'll see.

[00:29:46]>> Reputation. It's not like a No Man's Sky where millions and millions and millions of people bought that game. Everybody in the world was looking forward to it.

[00:29:54]Then it just didn't deliver and then those guys went back and they cooked and they just ignored all the noise and put out a really good game later. You're not going to see that same recovery because this game just doesn't have that same reputation. The Art Theft made sure of that. I'll tell you that right now. I don't think Sony had any idea what they were getting into when they bought Bungie. I don't think that they did proper market research. I think that's pretty obvious when you look to see how much they actually paid for the company per developer and also how much the company was actually making. But I think that this is a really good lesson for the rest of the industry. And that's that you can try to buy your way into our lives, but it's not going to work.

[00:30:30]You can try to buy market share. You can try to buy your way into some of these genres, but if you don't understand the people on the other side of the screen, if you don't understand what's going on with that company, all you're going to do is just pay a premium on failing in public. That's all you're going to get.

[00:30:45]If Sony had seen how often, how frequently Bungie was disappointing their audience, how many times they had pissed them off, how many times they had taken things from them, how many times they had failed outside of the crazy peaks that they had seen with some of their dedicated expansions. I think that they probably would have maybe secondguessed this purchase in some way.

[00:31:05]They should have, but this is the cost of not making sure that you're paying attention to see what the reputation actually is with the audience. What are players actually talking about? The people that are complaining online, especially when it comes to games like this, they're not in the minority. And I think it shows as much when you see how many copies of this game sold.

[00:31:26]Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed the video.

[00:31:28]If you guys did enjoy the video, like the video, subscribe to the >> All right, there it is. That is from Legendary Drops. They can't say we didn't warn them. It's talking about Bungie and the recent disaster that's gone on with Destiny 2 and Marathon. And honestly, like I said, this guy gets it.

[00:31:42]This guy very accurate representation of the situation that we're in right now.

[00:31:47]And it's a really tough one to be in.

[00:31:49]And things were, you know, we had ups and downs in the past. And, you know, it is what it is. We had a rough Destiny 2 launch and there was some Destiny drought in D1, but we kind of got through a lot of that. It's hard to see our route through this right now. I will say that, you know, Bungie being still evaluated at over $2 billion, right?

[00:32:09]Over $3 billion, right? It leaves you some hope, right? Like you would imagine that a company worth $3 billion doesn't go belly up, you know, in just such a short period of time, but it's probably going to require some crazy transformation of Destiny 2. And I don't know what it's going to take. I don't know what's going to happen with it.

[00:32:27]It's going to be fascinating to see the future of this, though, because I think we're going to very quickly, this is the timeline I'm predicting, we're going to get the marathon season 2 numbers.

[00:32:37]They're not going to be very good.

[00:32:38]That's going to that might prompt some announcements. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see. And then we're going to get the Destiny 2 June update numbers. And unfortunately, they're not going to be as good either. They're probably going to be much better than Marathon, though.

[00:32:51]Like, let's be real. There's not much competition at this point. But they'll be much better than Marathon. But it's just a June update. It's just a refresh to like the old raids. It's really not going to, you know, jazz everyone to get online. As much as I wish it would. And truly, if you want to see Destiny 2 not die, like if that's your prerogative, you want to see Destiny 2 in long term, I would recommend getting online in June, my dudes. I would definitely recommend. We need every We're calling all Guardians right now, okay? This is like Cade when Destiny 2 launched. This is the call for everyone. Get online in June. Uh or else there may not be another June update ever. You know what I'm saying? Like, you better get online or else this game is going to be cooked.

[00:33:31]So, we'll see. Yeah, it's going to be a tough time. So then the real key here is and the most fascinating point is those two updates are going to go live.

[00:33:38]They're probably going to be pretty lukewarm to bad, right? And then the real key is what happens with the Shattered Cycle. Does the Shattered Cycle do anything even remotely acceptable for Sony's, you know, revenue costs that they're looking for? Does it do Edge of Fate numbers? Does it do Renegades numbers? Does it do worse than both? Does Shattered Cycle do worse than Renegades potentially? I don't know, man. It's that's really scary to think about. We're not too far away from that either. As crazy as it sounds, you're like, "Oh, that's like forever away."

[00:34:14]Like, they haven't even talked about Shattered Cycle. Well, technically the June update is in 2 weeks and Shattered Cycle should be 3 months after that. So, we're only months away from seeing a big big outcome for what the future of Destiny is looking like. You know, we're months away from knowing, okay, it's bad. How bad is it, though? That's what we really need to know is, can we rally the troops? Can we get people back online? There will be a new raid for Shattered Cycle. There will be plenty of new things to do. Will people come back?

[00:34:45]Or has this down period, this downturn, has this marathon launch really soured people to such a degree that people actually check the [ __ ] out? Like, are people actually going to be like, "No, like shattered cycle, not coming back."

[00:35:00]And that's what we'll find out, right?

[00:35:02]We'll find out. And with the current climate, I can't help but feel like it'll be pretty bad. So, maybe Sony will do some drastic measures. Maybe something crazy will happen. And who knows? What we need is a complete shift to Bungie's culture, a complete shift in identity, or a new studio working on the game. My genuine opinion is that the only way Destiny goes forward in a successful way is we create a whole new studio called Destiny Studios. That's it. Much like we did with Halo Studios and 343. They didn't do the best job obviously, but Destiny Studios would be led by some other people. So, a different group with a different core values and a different vision for the game and one that would hopefully tap into the maybe the original vision like the Destiny 1 vision. You know, some people that really want to make the game feel like it did back then. That would be the best approach in my opinion, but I don't know that we'll ever see that.

[00:35:53]subbed. We're left with this mess right