The last time we saw any player figures for Marathon came from Alinea Analytics, who estimated sales of around 1.2 million copies of the extraction shooter, making $55 million in gross revenue for Bungie. Of this figure, 800,000 copies were believed to be sold through Steam, with PS5 taking second place with 217,000 copies, and Xbox Series X/S taking third with 133,000 copies.

Interestingly, both estimates for the shooter’s commercial performance have put the PS5 in second place, despite Marathon essentially being a first-party game for Sony since it owns Bungie.

Commenting on Marathon‘s concurrent player figures, former Square Enix Holdings business director Jacob Navok took to social media to note that Sony’s lack of marketing for the title is an indicator of an overall lack of faith in Bungie.

“Nearly 2k loss in peak in 24 hours,” he wrote. “Brutal. I had thought the floor was 15k, could be looking at a 10k floor.” He went on to point to the fact that Sony hasn’t been using its marketing capabilities with the PS5 dashboard to push Marathon. “Sony owns a ton of digital estate on the PlayStation dashboards to push Marathon,” he wrote. “Its lack of marketing push to support the numbers speaks to the lack of faith from the platform holder.”

Another social media user responded by bringing up the fact that Marathon has been topping the most-played charts on Xbox Series X/S since its release. Keeping this in mind, they posited that Microsoft would have done a better job with marketing than Sony.

“The #1 most played game by hours on Xbox this past month was Marathon,” they wrote. “If [Microsoft] owned it, it would be the biggest game since Halo. Sony doesn’t even try. MS would have it front page, and on Game Pass indefinitely. Marketing was non-existent. The least they could do is free for PS5.”

The player figures also paint an interesting picture for Sony’s multiplatform release ambitions going forward. The company has reportedly decided to scale back on its decision to bring single-player games to other consoles. However, it remains keen on releasing multiplayer titles on as many platforms as possible to ensure player numbers remain high.

Marathon is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, and Bungie has continued to support the title with extensive post-launch updates. Among these has been a nerf to the WSTR Shotgun, which was previously two-shotting players through their stronger shields, making it the best choice for close-quarters engagement. For more details on Marathon, check out our review.

Discussing the difficulty of Saros when compared to Returnal, Louden noted that many players just outright weren’t able to finish the latter game. This meant that the studio would have to give players more tools to take on the challenges in Saros in their own way.

“We knew we created something special, and we knew that everyone loved Returnal, but people did tell us, ‘I wanted to love Returnal, but I just couldn’t get forward,’” said Louden. “So we wanted to allow players to confront the challenge in their own way. That was the idea of rewarding the progress. It was the idea of adding the modifiers. But something I’m really proud of, Matti and our amazing design team, is these modifiers don’t just make the game more approachable. It makes it way more brutal, which I think is super cool.”

He went on to discuss the major difficulty spike that pops up in Returnal when players reach its second biome – the Crimson Wastes. Bringing up the fact that players would praise Returnal after reaching its second biome, Louden made note of the fact that the same players would then likely get blocked by the difficulty spike.

“What we did find is once people got through the second biome, they loved the game,” Louden said. “They say it’s one of the best PlayStation 5 games for them. How can we share this experience, and how can we get even more people to love what we’re building? And then the dream for us is once they love Saros, they go back through 30 years of Housemarque history and jump into Returnal and Nex Machina and Matterfall and Resogun and Alienation and Dead Nation. We have a rich history, so it’s just about wanting to get even more people to understand the Housemarque experience.”

For Häkli, the reasoning behind making Saros more approachable than Returnal was simple – he wanted to make sure that more people could enjoy the title. He also reaffirmed that Saros isn’t quite that much easier than Returnal. Rather, it is simply more approachable since players have more room to experiment with weapon types and their own movesets.

“I wanted to enable more people to enjoy these games,” Häkli said. “I knew that Returnal was brutal, so that was the impetus to start building something that is more approachable, but not necessarily making it easier. Just figuring out ways of giving players more room and time to learn the ropes and understand the mechanics, because everything is really circling around the flow state. Internalizing the inputs, understanding what’s going on, having the confidence that I can do this.”

“When it clicks, it’s something unlike any other game,” Häkli continued. “And I just want to make sure that more people will experience that rather than leave it for a very small niche that only the hardcore players will understand.”

Saros is available on PS5. For more details, check out our review.

“Players can continue to access and play their purchased games as usual,” said the representative. “A one-time online check is required after purchase to confirm the game’s license, after which no further check-ins are needed.”

The DRM was first noticed last week by YouTuber Lance MacDonald, who started spreading awareness about a supposed 30-day timer on PS4 and PS5 games. This prompted many players to run their own tests by, for example, removing the console’s CMOS batteries or remaining offline despite the timer ticking down. This led to the discovery that setting a PS4 or PS5 as a “primary” console for a PSN account also had no effect on the timer.

ResetEra forum user Andshrew discovered this week that digital copies of PS4 and PS5 games bought after the middle of April get a 30-day timer. On performing the online check within the 30-day limit, the timer is seemingly removed, replaced with a perpetual license. The system is believed to be related to Sony’s 14-day time limit for players who might want refunds on digitally purchased games.

Due to Sony’s silence on the matter, the timer had been considered by many players to be a bug, with some bringing up comparisons to a similar incident that happened back in 2022. The system seems to have been introduced with the March 2026 firmware update for PS5.

In the meantime, a report from last month has indicated that Sony might also be testing out dynamic prices for digital copies of games. Examples of this were discovered in the PlayStation Store listing for Stellar Blade across two accounts, where one was offered the title at a 70 percent discount, while the other was offered a 43 percent discount.

The factors taken into consideration with these dynamic prices remain unknown, but speculation has indicated that the age of a PlayStation account seems to play a key role. Average play time and most-recent login time might also be considered when the PlayStation Store offers a discount.

Testing at the time had indicated that the dynamic pricing system only seems to apply to PS5-exclusive games, at least for now. This would indicate that Sony is simply testing the system out before eventually giving similar options to third-party developers and publishers.

Sony is also likely hard at work on its next-generation console. Rumors have indicated that the PS6 will be around 10 times faster than the PS5 in ray tracing performance, which will result in 3.10 times the frame rate. While a home console and handheld are expected to be announced, there don’t seem to be any plans for a low-priced PS6 “Lite”.

Dashing in Mid-Air While Shielding

When you’re not shielding, dashing or jumping over projectiles, you’ll often end up having to do all three. For instance, the enemies in the Ancient Depths, which disperse waves of blue projectiles that you need to jump over yellow bullets to absorb if you’re not willing to take on Corruption, though there are some benefits to it that we’ll go over in a bit.

Perk Effects and Their Duration

Not all weapon perks are simply about different kinds of damage. Some can have specific requirements, like weapon damage directly generating Power. Others are less obvious, and it can often be easy to miss their effects in combat. So pay attention to the upper left of your screen – a small icon will indicate their activation and how long it lasts, allowing you to take advantage of it at the best times.

Attribute Volatility

As you rapidly approach the endgame, you’ll start to notice something called Attribute Volatility on different Artifacts. These let you break the cap on different stats, thus allowing something like, say, Integrity to go much higher than intended. There are drawbacks, however. Breaking the cap on Integrity means that you can’t see enemy health, so when fighting a enemy, their HP bar is just grey (until it’s fully depleted and removed). Be especially careful of Drive Volatility, since that will cause all Lucenite to be lost if you die. No exceptions.

Parry Energy and Aiming

Parrying is more than just a defensive mechanism, meant to swat away Nova or red-colored projectiles. It’s also an offensive tool, as the energy from a parry travels in a straight line towards your target, obliterating them through red shields. However, it can be aimed with the reticle, so if a enemy launches red projectiles at you, simply aim directly at them to send the parry energy their way. It may not deal the most damage, but it’s excellent for building up stagger, even on Elites.

Overdrive

Your Ultimate, and what an Ultimate it is. Overdrive is built up over time and unleashes a powerful area of effects attack that can outright kill Elites and heavily damage enemies. You’re invincible while casting it, and best of all, any enemies slain by it will drop Aether, making for a good snap response when overwhelmed. But it can be even better with upgrades (many requiring Halcyon) that can increase its damage, blast radius and even build up from damage dealt.

Turning Corruption into Damage Resistance

Contrary to what Coldplay says, yellow isn’t the nicest color on Carcosa, especially when you’re taking on too much Corruption. The risk vs reward aspect is obvious, especially after taking the upgrade that lets you absorb yellow projectiles to feed your Power weapon. However, if you find an Artifact that increases damage resistance based on the amount of Corruption, then it can become a valuable tool for survival. Just don’t go overboard with it – you can’t die from Corruption, but no amount of damage resistance will save you at 1 HP.

Shield Upgrades

Whether you’re adamant on tanking damage through Corruption or not, scope out the Armor Matrix for upgrades to your Soltari shield, including those that reduce the damage taken from it. Parries reducing Corruption is also recommended, especially in later enemy fights when you’re facing a barrage of different colors.

Quick Shield Activation

The Soltari shield is tied to your melee button, and it won’t take long for you to realize that you can activate it at the last second to absorb projectiles. With such low activation time, it isn’t difficult to absorb waves of blue projectiles, unleash a Power shot at a enemy, and then immediately absorb the next wave. Such windows for absorption become even tighter in future enemy fights, so learn to juggle between activating your shield and then quickly transitioning to damage.

Staggers and Executions

At first glance, pistols and shotguns aren’t all they’re cracked up to be; the former is held back by low ammo and constant reloading, while the latter lacks range (even though incendiary rounds can be good). However, they are good at building stagger, especially with perks like Cover Fire. Once you obtain an upgrade to your melee attack, which allows for teleporting to enemies after they’ve been staggered, you can initiate gory kills, complete with health regen if you increase the chances of Aether dropping.

Weapon Stats Scale to Attributes

Attributes don’t just dictate your overall health, shield or Lucenite gain – they can also influence the scaling of weapon stats. This can be checked whenever you’re picking up a new weapon, so if you want to spec into a higher clip size or damage accumulation, it may help in build planning, especially when looking at which Artifacts to prioritize.

Weak Points and Turning Off Auto Hit

Auto Hit can be great if you want to focus on dodging projectiles while ensuring consistent damage. But there are benefits to turning it off, which vary on a weapon-to-weapon basis. All enemies have a blue weak spot, which takes more damage from direct hits, and there’s no better method than with weapons that turn off Auto Hit. Prioritize as per your preference, but if you want to up your damage potential, then it’s worth a shot.

When to Reduce Lucenite Gain

The Carcosan Modifiers allow for highly customizing the level of difficulty that you want out of Saros. Picking higher damage dealt and reduced damage taken is always ideal, but with how many points they cost, it can be difficult to balance the appropriate Trials. Well, if you’ve hit a wall with your current upgrades, which usually happens because you need to kill a enemy, go ahead and enable reduced Lucenite gained when returning to The Passage. This cuts back on the amount of Lucenite earned from a cycle, but it’s worth so much as a Trial that it offers enough wiggle room for protection modifiers.

Unlimited Protection Modifiers

If you don’t want to bother with the whole balancing act whatsoever, good news: You can enable all protection modifiers without any consequence. Just go to the settings under gameplay and enable Unlimited Protection Modifiers. Is it essentially Easy Mode? Yes, but for those who simply want to get on with the story and surpass a super difficult enemy, it’s always an option.

Choosing Your Favorite Weapon

Returning to The Passage – be it through death or teleportation – will result in Arjun keeping his current weapon. It won’t have all the unlocked perks for balancing reasons, but if you enable the Weapon Symmetry protection modifier, then the next found weapon is more likely to be similar to the current one. Wait for a better version to pop up with the desired perks and then resume slaughtering at a leisurely pace.

Optional Eclipse

The Eclipse is a game-changing effect, transforming Carcosa and resulting in more corrupting projectiles. And while it’s mandatory for the first few biomes, or depending on the story, you don’t always have to enable it. If you’re just looking for a stroll by the coast, feel free to ignore the outstretched hands, although you’ll miss out on Corrupted weapons and Artifacts (which are worth pursuing despite the latter’s negative effects).

This guide is a listing of the best weapons and all four power weapons to be found in SAROS.

Best Handcannon

Ricochet Handcannon

Shattered Rise

While all three Handcannons become available in the very first biome, the Ricochet Handcannon stands out for its penetration and, as the name implies, its ability to ricochet rounds off of the environment. Whether in primary or alternate fire mode, it will shred through clumped enemies quickly.

Best Rifle

Smart Rifle

Shattered Rise

One of three rifles in the game, the Smart Rifle’s alternate fire mode can home in on targets, which is a blessing when combined with its high rate of fire.

Best Shotgun

Annihilator Shotgun

Ancient Depths

The primary fire mode has a standard horizontal spread pattern. The real draw is the alternate fire launcher that fires a grenade which detonates on impact and has a significant area of effect.

Best Crossbow

Bifurcator Crossbow

Shattered Descent

This crossbow has a perfect combination of the fire modes from the other two crossbows. The primary fire mode can be charged to stack bolts over time, and then released as a spreading volley that can home by either letting go of R2 or dashing.

The alternate fire mode is a simple single shot that then splits up on impact with a weakpoint, into additional projectiles that can home in.

Best Chakram

Ripsaw Chakram

Acolyte’s Heaven

R2 fires projectiles that bury themselves in targets, which can then do increased tick damage through the use of alternate fire.

All Power Weapons

Prominence

Shattered Rise

Hold down L2 and press R2 to fire a staggering area-of-effect explosive round.

Dispiritor

Ancient Depths

This weapon does tick damage and can be continually redirected at several targets. Targets eliminated by this weapons then spawn a short-lived projectile spewing turret.

Nova Lance

Desecrated Fortress

Hold down both L2 and R2 for a charged penetrating shot that only fires on release.

Illumine

Cathedral

Fire a charged-up lock-on beam that does persistent damage based on Power availability.

Those are some of the best weapons as well as all four of the power weapons in SAROS.

This SAROS guide is all about where you can go about finding all the Halcyon you could possibly need.

Red Containers

Containers are the primary source of Halcyon on your runs, offered as one of the two choices when you open them. Even so, they are not a guaranteed choice, and you may need to grind for several Cycles to amass enough Halcyon. Whenever the opportunity does arise, Halcyon is the recommended choice, no matter what the other reward is, as it has more permanent utility.

Alphas/Enemies

Both mini-enemies and enemies have a Halcyon drop chance, but once again, this is not guaranteed. With sufficient firepower at your disposal, you can potentially attempt to farm Alphas quickly and painlessly for Halcyon.

Nightmare Gates/Strands

The seven Nightmare Strands present an additional challenge, which in turn offer you better rewards including Halcyon. The Strands primarily serve to recharge your Second Chance, one of the upgrades you will be spending Halcyon on, in the Armor Matrix. Second Chance lets you recover from a losing Cycle, and is one of the first upgrades you should aim for when the opportunity arises.

Bear in mind that the Halcyon available in a given biome has a predetermined maximum, which you can observe for yourself via the World Dial. Be sure to keep track of this, so as to avoid wasting time searching every nook and cranny of a biome where you have already exhausted the limited Halcyon supply. 

Collecting just 70 Halcyon will unlock the ‘Eclipse’s Gift’ trophy/achievement. The sum total of Halcyon across the biomes is over 160, so this is easily achievable.

When spending Halcyon, be sure to prioritize reducing penalties for dying, and Second Chance. These upgrades will greatly improve the gameplay experience during Cycles.

Those are all the ways to get Halcyon quickly and efficiently in SAROS.

This SAROS guide is all about how to quickly and efficiently farm for Lucenite.

World Pickups

Lucenite is plentiful right out in the open, and you will stumble upon it on both the main and side paths. However, there can be a lot more hidden out of sight, whether in elevated locations, obscured by other objects, or behind barriers. If you have the inclination, be sure to look in every nook and cranny where secrets might potentially lie.

Grinding the same biome is also an option, and in fact might be the only way to max out progression until the next biome is cleared.

Golden yellow Containers can potentially supply you with a significant infusion of Lucenite, but require Carcosan keys in order to crack them open. The keys themselves are a limited resource found in white Containers with a relatively low chance to spawn themselves, and you might want to save them for gates instead. The Armor Matrix has several Key Storage upgrades that allow you to start runs with keys in hand, up to a maximum of five.

Farming Enemies

Enemy drops are an obvious source of Lucenite, however, those drops can disappear in a matter of seconds. In order to avoid losing Lucenite like this, try to position yourself such that you can safely snap up the drops as soon as they appear, while avoiding taking damage from other enemies and hazards.

Aether Orb Conversion

Aether normally restores Armor Integrity, but will automatically convert to Lucenite if you happen to be at full Integrity already, which works as a nice bonus for avoiding damage.

Drive Attribute

The Drive Attribute increases Lucenite gain to allow faster Proficiency upgrading. While the permanent modifiers are applied through the Armor Matrix, you can also increase it temporarily during Cycles for the duration of a given run only.

Cycle Artefacts

Artefacts are a potential reward choice when cracking open Containers. While Halcyon should be top priority when making a decision there, any Artefacts that can boost Lucenite gains come in a very close second. Item attributes can affect gathering either indirectly through raising the Drive attribute, or directly increasing Lucenite gain itself.

Bear in mind that these Artefacts exist only for the duration of the Cycle, so make the most of it while you can.

Tangential Lucenite Upgrades

These Armor Matrix upgrades are a matter of return on investment of your Lucenite, wherein you spend resources in order to increase or improve your Lucenite collection bonuses going forward. You should prioritize these as early as possible for best effect, especially those related to enlarging drops from enemies and the lifetime of those drops before despawn.

The latter is especially critical as dropped Lucenite tends to despawn quite quickly without it, making some battles a matter of bearing the risk of chasing the Lucenite while tanking damage from any remaining enemies.

Lucenite Saver is an Armor Matrix upgrade that you may want to look into spending Halcyon on, especially if you tend to die a lot on Cycles. With an initial penalty of 50% to your Lucenite pool, any further amount you can preserve upon death will be of benefit to you in the long run.

Those are all the ways to farm for and save Lucenite in SAROS.

“Nearly 2k loss in peak in 24 hours,” he wrote. “Brutal. I had thought the floor was 15k, could be looking at a 10k floor.” He went on to point to the fact that Sony hasn’t been using its marketing capabilities with the PS5 dashboard to push Marathon. “Sony owns a ton of digital estate on the PlayStation dashboards to push Marathon,” he wrote. “Its lack of marketing push to support the numbers speaks to the lack of faith from the platform holder.”

Interestingly, another social media user – DomRock – replied by noting that the most-played game on Xbox throughout April has been Marathon. They also said that the game would likely enjoy better marketing if Bungie were owned by Microsoft rather than Sony.

“The #1 most played game by hours on Xbox this past month was Marathon,” they wrote. “If [Microsoft] owned it, it would be the biggest game since Halo. Sony doesn’t even try. MS would have it front page, and on Game Pass indefinitely. Marketing was non-existent. The least they could do is free for PS5.”

A report from last month indicated that, since its release, Marathon had sold around 1.2 million copies at the time. According to Alinea Analytics, the game has made Bungie around $55 million in gross revenue. When it comes to platform splits, Steam seems to have been the best-performing for Marathon, with an estimated 800,000 copies sold. The same estimates put PS5 in second place with 217,000 copies, and Xbox Series X/S in third with 133,000 copies. Analyst Rhys Elliot believes that a first-party release by a Sony-owned studio not being able to break the 20 percent mark on PS5 is a “notable data point.”

“Marathon is technically a first-party Sony title, so seeing the home console struggle to break 20% of the volume is a notable data point for the ongoing platform-agnostic debate,” wrote Elliott. “PlayStation Studios online games will almost certainly continue being multiplatform (despite Sony reportedly pulling back on PC releases).”

The analyst has pointed to Marathon‘s player acquisition being slower than that of another notable PvPvE extraction shooter, ARC Raiders. A key problem has seemingly been UI/UX issues, which led to a 49 percent increase in sales following Marathon‘s server slam.

“Bungie could have had more time to fix the onboarding process had the beta happened earlier,” wrote Elliott, “but Marathon launched three days after the beta finished. These factors limited the launch sales quite a bit, I reckon.”

For more details about Marathon, check out its latest update from earlier this month. Also, take a look at our review.

Booth has noted that one of the studio’s main goals in designing 4:LOOP‘s boss fights is that each one has to be a unique experience beyond just visual design. Bad Robot Games wants players to react in different ways depending on the boss, which also means adopting new tactics and improvising. With the Scanner—also called “The Cube” internally—Booth spoke about wanting to create a boss encounter that was less about direct combat and more about spatial awareness, navigation, and cross-map coordination.

To achieve this, the Scanner is equipped with one main method of attack – a Laser Matrix, dubbed the “Grid of Doom,” which covers the entire map in an interlocking grid of dangerous red lasers. Getting hit by one of these lasers is enough to knock a player down, with a second hit taking them out of the fight entirely. However, the Laser Matrix also moves slowly and is easy to see, leaving it up to the players to figure out safe ways to tackle it. As the fight goes on, however, the laser grid starts getting tighter.

The boss itself has been designed as a cube with 9 tiles on each side, for a total of 54 targets. Players have to knock out all 54 panels at the same time, which reveals its vulnerable Reactor Core. To add to the challenge, the Scanner keeps moving around and rotating, and damaged panels will reset over time.

“This creates a boss fight that requires players to spread out and attack from multiple angles, while navigating the Scanner’s ever-tightening Laser Matrix,” explained Booth. “All of this results in a unique gameplay challenge. Stay mobile enough to avoid the Grid of Doom, while remaining focused enough to knock out panels and coordinate a team-wide attack on the Reactor Core once it’s exposed.”

Opening up the Reactor Core gives players a brief window during which they can deal as much damage as possible. The general design of the boss also encourages players to think harder about their loadouts, like picking up a Cloaking Backpack to help them navigate the Laser Matrix, or picking more powerful weapons to quickly shoot down the Reactor Core.

“The Scanner started from a simple image: A giant, floating cube puzzle with breakable panels,” he wrote. “Over time, it grew into one of our most iconic enemies, and one that touches on almost every layer of how players can improvise to overcome overwhelming obstacles together. And it does all of this without firing a single shot at the players.”

4:LOOP is being developed for PC and PS5. For more details, take a look at its announcement trailer and another gameplay deep dive with a focus on action and gadgets.

The X post highlighting the issue points out that recently purchased titles for the PS4 now have a system that verifies their licenses once every thirty days in an effort to ensure the legitimacy of a copy of the game in question. What’s more, the PS5 seems to have it too, although things are a little more subtle on the new console.

What that means is that you’re going to have to connect to the internet at least once every thirty days to keep playing a game that you’ve purchased after March 2026. Older games in your library remain unaffected, and you can keep playing offline once you do get your copy verified. The move has understandably created some confusion among players, a situation further exacerbated by the fact that Sony is yet to offer an official explanation.

IGN’s coverage of the situation draws attention to a similar situation from a while ago, which had a few players locked out of their purchases, thanks to a hardware issue that affected the PlayStation’s clock.