Bungie's Marathon Struggles: Only 1.2 Million Sales, Sony's High Hopes Dashed
In early March, the release of the extraction shooter Marathon took place. Long before the game's release, the public was divided into two camps: some saw great potential in the novelty, while others were sure it would repeat the colossal failure of Sony's network shooter Concord.
The developers have yet to publish statistics on the number of copies sold and player engagement, but the initial figures from analysts look discouraging for the Bungie studio.
Not a failure, but far from success
According to Rhys Elliott, head of the Alinea Analytics agency, Marathon demonstrated a situation atypical for PlayStation Studios games: in addition to its sales reaching only 1.2 million copies, the platform breakdown is surprising — 70% of players prefer to play on PC, while PlayStation 5 accounts for 19% of sales. The remaining 11% are Xbox Series X|S and cloud.
Overall, it is not surprising that most people find it more convenient to play a dynamic shooter on PC, but this ratio confirms the importance of a multiplatform strategy.
What went wrong
Game industry experts at the recently held GDC 2026 conference discussed the reasons for Marathon's modest release and compared it to the genre-similar ARC Raiders. Conclusion: Marathon repels newbies with a complex interface and unclear mechanics, while Embark Studios' game looks understandable, simple and attractive, with its gameplay being smoother and more varied.
According to Forbes reviewer Paul Tassi, Alinea Analytics' figures are close to the truth and are confirmed by his sources at Bungie, noting that Sony had expected significantly higher sales and considers its investment in the studio as unsuccessful.
The problem is that these numbers are lower than expected — both at launch and now — given the context of the project: long development, large budget, and Sony's expectations. After all, this is the first new IP from Bungie in the past decade. This is also a reality. Of course, this is no Concord or Highguard, and it was silly to expect something similar. But this doesn't make Marathon a true hit either.