Sony is sabotaging both its new live service games at once with their beta dates

Horizon Hunters Gathering shot of player character all posing dramatically with weapons drawn — It’s bad enough when rival companies do this, but both games are under Sony (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Guerrilla Games has just announced dates for its Horizon Hunters Gathering beta, but it clashes with Bungie’s own Marathon beta.

Any new live service game that launches today faces a steep uphill battle to build an audience and gain any sort of foothold in a market dominated by big names like Fortnite.

That’s why open beta tests are so important, since they not only help stress test the online servers but work as free demos, attracting new players who may not bother with the full release (something perhaps Highguard could’ve done with).

So, it is absolutely shocking to learn that two such betas – one for Horizon Hunters Gathering and one for Marathon – are taking place at the exact same time, despite both of them being published by Sony.

A Marathon beta (or Server Slam Weekend as developer Bungie calls it) was announced during the State of Play from a couple of weeks ago, and is scheduled to run from Thursday, February 26 to Monday, March 2.

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A week beforehand, though, Sony and Guerrilla Games announced Horizon multiplayer spin-off Horizon Hunters Gathering, encouraging fans to sign up for a beta test at the end of the month.

Now, Guerrilla’s begun sending emails to finalise the beta’s dates, and it too takes place this weekend, from February 27 to March 1.

There must’ve been some serious miscommunication going on because it beggars’ belief why Sony would let this happen when it’s so desperate for a live service games hit from one of its own studios (Helldivers 2 was made by a third party).

Marathon is already a niche franchise to begin with (it started life as an Apple Mac exclusive) and what fans it has were hardly clamouring for a live service extraction shooter, when all the previous entries were primarily single-player.

Horizon, by comparison, has a larger profile, but it too has focused on single-player adventures up till now and, unsurprisingly, reception to a multiplayer only spin-off has been frosty, with the YouTube announcement garnering 104,000 dislikes compared to approximately 21,000 likes.

There’s literally no reason for Sony not to push one of these beta sessions back, to give both games room to breathe. Especially when Marathon is out next week, on March 5, and thus needs way more attention – whereas Hunters Gathering doesn’t even have a release year yet.

As a reminder, Marathon won’t be free-to-play and launches at £34.99 – the same price as the ill-fated Concord, which suffered extremely low player turnout to the point where Sony killed the game just two weeks after launch.

We wouldn’t blame anyone at Bungie for feeling frustrated with this when the studio is in dire need of a win, having suffered layoffs and general mismanagement since Sony bought it out; a decision that Sony has admitted it’s yet to reap any real benefits from.