Spare a thought for Bungie’s Marathon, which, despite the booming extraction shooter market, has seemingly been relegated to memory after numerous controversies. For better or worse, parent company Sony hasn’t forgotten about it, with Lin Tao, chief financial officer, confirming that it would still launch within this fiscal year.
“With regards to the development of Marathon,” she said in a recent earnings call. “We are still working on it. From October 22 to 28, there was a technical test involving 80,000 people. As a result, the gameplay and then retention – those are the key KPIs that we tested on.”
Currently, it’s “in the process of analyzing the performance against those KPIs,” and will make “corrections as needed.” “We are fully dedicated to launching the title as scheduled. Yes, we assume that we will launch this within this year, and that is included in the forecast,” said Tao.
Marathon was set to arrive last September, but numerous complaints about its quality and a case involving stolen art assets resulted in a delay (and morale allegedly being in “free-fall” at the studio). Bungie will announce a new release date sometime this Fall, preferably in November, but it has yet to confirm whether the extraction shooter is launching this year.
At this point, it seems more than likely that it will be delayed until early 2026, if only to avoid competition with Escape from Tarkov and ARC Raiders. If nothing else, the first-ever closed test served as a good litmus test for Embark Studios on what it was doing right with its shooter, so that’s a plus.
