Bungie vows to stick with Marathon despite soft PS5 sales
Sales estimates put Marathon at about 1.2 million copies across platforms, with roughly 19% of those purchases on PS5.
Bungie moved to quash talk that it might abandon Marathon after sales estimates suggested the game hadn’t performed as strongly on PlayStation as hoped.
The studio posted a short message on the game’s support site saying it was “in it for the long haul.” It appeared in a post about PC performance and optimizations, and you can read it on the official support page here.
“We are in it for the long haul with Marathon. We look forward to many years of steady improvements to every aspect of the game. Thank you for taking this journey with us!”
Those remarks arrived after analytics firm Alinea shared estimates suggesting Marathon sold about 1.2 million copies across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox since its March 5, 2026 launch. Alinea’s post on X is available here, and Forbes reported similar figures after double-checking the data with sources at Bungie.
Marathon has sold 1.2M copies across Steam, PS5, and Xbox (@alineaanalytics estimates).
It hasn't exactly made the splash Sony and Bungie wanted, even if the game underneath the surface is a MASTERWORK of design.
Looking at the split between Steam, PS5, and Xbox, Steam is… pic.twitter.com/vl8ku1Y1Bn
— Rhys Elliott (@superhys) March 24, 2026
The same reporting put raw revenue at roughly $55 million and estimated around 217,000 copies were bought on PS5, equal to about 19 percent of overall sales. Player activity also showed a familiar post-launch curve with daily active users peaked near 478,000 at launch, dipped the following weekend to roughly 345,000, then climbed back to around 380,000 on March 21–22 after the Cryo Archive raid went live.
Forbes noted Bungie intended to keep executing its current content roadmap for Marathon, and the studio’s support message reinforced that stance. Still, the note was posted in the context of technical fixes for the PC edition, so it does not spell out how platform support or long-term investments will be apportioned between PC, consoles, and any publishing partners.
Marathon has drawn generally positive critical response. The question now is whether the player base and revenue will be large enough to meet the expectations that come with a high-budget, high-profile new IP from a studio of Bungie’s scale.
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Marathon
Developed by Bungie
A PvP-focused extraction shooter set on the mysterious planet of Tau Ceti IV, Marathon will see players inhabit the bodies of Runners, cybernetic mercenaries who have been designed to survive the planet’s harsh environments and explore the lost colony that once inhabited Tau Ceti’s surface. Players will engage solo or in crews of three, searching for mysterious alien artifacts, as well as for valuable loot and new weapons and gear that they can add to their collection.
- Genre: Shooter
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5
- Modes: Multiplayer, Battle Royale
- Publisher: Bungie
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Age Rating:
GRAC 15+
