Bungie to Bring Destiny 2 Back as Flagship Title — 5ch: ‘They’ve Basically Admitted Marathon Failed’

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The story

On September 18, 2026, US-based Bungie announced that it will once again position Destiny 2 as one of its main titles, gradually restoring campaigns, locations, and raids that had been placed in the “vault.” Reflecting on its new title Marathon, the company said it “understood the game’s uniqueness, but it didn’t reach as many players as we’d hoped” — a remark widely read as a de facto course correction. On 5ch’s console-wars (ゲハ) board, reactions ranged from welcoming Destiny 2’s survival to jabs at Marathon’s poor performance and sarcasm about Bungie’s development decisions and investment choices.

The Next Chapter of Bungie

September 18, 2026 – Poria and Josh

Hello everyone, this is Poria and Josh.

Source: bungie.net / Original article here

What people said

2AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:24
Yay, now we get to play it again!
4AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:26
-The game was well received from launch, and the players who played Marathon really got what made it unique. But at the same time, it's true we didn't reach as many players as we'd hoped, and we recognize the game needs to keep evolving.

lol they basically just admitted Marathon fell short of expectations
5AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:27
Wasn't Nishino out here bragging about how well it was doing… weird 🤔
6AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:28
This is hilarious
they've basically fully admitted Marathon was a huge flop lmao


and how many Japanese players does Destiny 2 even have anyway lol
7AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:29
Re: #3
so the policy was basically "we'll fund Bungie, but not Kojima!" huh lol
8AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:29
Just give up on Marathon already
9AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:34
Wake up — you're the only ones (you foreigners) who actually like PvP-focused games
12AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:38
Well, if bringing Kojima in could really turn things around, that should've already happened back in the COD days
13AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:39
Japan Studio's gone, and Japan's online-game crowd (「オンギーズ」, playful slang for "online gamers") is all gone too…
20AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:56
Re: #13
Remember Astro Bot? Wasn't that supposed to be a GOTY winner?
14AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:39
So they were planning to make Marathon their main focus, but it flopped hard, so now they're changing course
Sony really saddled itself with a ton of debt from that panic buy lol
15AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:40
Is there anyone here on the console-wars board who's actually happy like "yay, Destiny lives on!"??

Pretty sure there isn't a single one lol
16AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:47
But the weapon damage just won't go up
(´・ω・`) *sigh*
18AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:53
Too little too late — everyone already uninstalled Destiny 2 and moved on. And if they still can't let go of that garbage Marathon, it won't last long either — just let it die already.
21AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:56
We'll pay to keep Bungie on life support!
So Kojima, tough luck, your contract's getting cancelled!
22AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:57
'Keeping Destiny on life support'? That thing's way past just being '10 years old' at this point, lol
25AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:00
Re: #22
plenty of games have run for over 10 years without any major upgrades, so that's not really something worth attacking them for
23AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:58
They probably got their spirit crushed after being mocked to death over Destiny 2 having more concurrent players than Marathon lol
24AnonymousSep 22, 2026 06:59
Yeah, Destiny actually has more players lol
Marathon really was a massive failure
27AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:01
'Reviving' it by just bringing back content they deleted, lol
aren't they supposed to be making new content?
29AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:02
With 3+ randoms in your group
you can actually fight
solo, it's brutal, exhausting
there's a hard damage ceiling
31AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:03
They're flailing around so much it's honestly funny lol
33AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:06
The story's really well crafted,
so it'd be a waste to throw away
that's basically the reason
35AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:07
"An effort to win back everyone's trust"


lol that line got me
37AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:09
The most fun part of Destiny was everyone shooting at that Earth hole thing, or whatever it was called
39AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:11
>We have begun work to restore the campaigns, locations, and raids that had been placed in the Destiny 2 vault. These will become playable for all Destiny 2 players.
40AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:12
Re: #1
😂 now you get why Xbox's Phil Spencer didn't want Bungie, right?
41AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:12
Honestly, this game was never going to suit Japanese players to begin with — the endgame content basically demands voice chat and perfectly synced group timing (like jump rope) lol
42AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:13
BUNGIE + SONY

what a match made in heaven
48AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:18
[VIP Interview] SIE's Hideaki Nishino
https://www.famitsu.com/article/202606/77607

— It's been about a year since you became CEO. How would you assess the PlayStation business's results over this past year?

Nishino: In terms of the business, PS5 sales reached 16 million units last fiscal year, with strong purchases worldwide — that's a huge achievement. PlayStation Plus has also been performing well, and I feel good momentum there.

On the content side, third parties released a lot of great titles too. Among our own titles, 'Ghost of Yōtei' was very well received by users, and we also launched 'Marathon,' which I feel a lot of players have been enjoying.
49AnonymousSep 22, 2026 07:19
Re: #48
and yet they kept insisting over and over that Marathon was a success lol
86AnonymousSep 22, 2026 09:54
They did a massive round of layoffs on the Destiny team to keep the flopped Marathon on life support, and now, of all things, they're switching to keeping Destiny alive instead — that's insane.
There's zero logic behind these decisions.
This is exactly how a company behaves when it's run by internal political maneuvering instead of sense.
98AnonymousSep 22, 2026 10:39
Re: #86
The fact that they're not making Destiny 3 shows Sony's completely lost its appetite for investing in games
Guess Concord left that much of a scar on them lol
89AnonymousSep 22, 2026 10:11
Diablo 4 brought back dungeons from its old games and is having its best season ever because of it,
so copying that is really the only move here
92AnonymousSep 22, 2026 10:21
Re: #89
Blizzard's been doing incredibly well since Microsoft bought them
though maybe that just means things were that bad before
I don't play anything but OW, but it's hard to believe there was a whole funeral atmosphere with everyone counting down to shutdown just a few years ago
if Diablo's doing well too, that's great to hear

Background and key points of this story

Since 2021, Bungie has been setting aside some of Destiny 2’s campaigns, raids, and locations into what it calls the “Destiny Content Vault,” concentrating development resources instead on its next title, Marathon. This latest announcement marks a course correction: after Marathon failed to reach the scale of players Bungie had hoped for, the company is now restoring that vaulted content to Destiny 2. The frequent mentions of Hideo Kojima in the thread actually relate to a separately reported partnership between Sony and Kojima Productions, and it’s easy to mistake them as connected to this announcement when they aren’t. It’s also worth noting, to make sense of the reactions, that SIE CEO Hideaki Nishino had previously spoken positively about how Marathon was received, which is why some commenters are questioning how that squares with this sudden change of direction.

※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Console Wars)) thread “Bungie Is Reviving Destiny 2! Making It a Flagship Title Again — Marathon Also Getting Rebooted.”

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