Marathon has been out for just over a month now, and it’s been great. It’s basically exactly what I wanted it to be: a PvP-focused extraction shooter with Bungie’s signature gunplay and knack for visual flair. I’ve been having an absolute blast with it since launch, and it’s a nice counterbalance to Arc Raiders’ more social-sim approach. But there’s been all this talk about player counts, and how Marathon isn’t taking off in the same way as Arc Raiders has.
This week: Filled up my vault with lots of high-end loot, only to lose it in Cryo Archive on the weekend.
However, without knowing what Bungie and Sony consider a success (and in what timeframe) after the years of development time and money invested into Marathon, it’s basically impossible to confirm whether its performance is ‘enough’ for either team so far. Though I’d wager that the current baseline probably is below expectations for a new Bungie FPS after Sony spent $3.6 billion acquiring the studio and reports that Marathon cost over $200 million. That’s quite an uphill battle.
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If Sony’s not going to stand by it, then what was the point of acquiring Bungie and letting it continue down this path for years?
The thing is, it’s immediately obvious that Marathon was never going to be the next big thing, and I’d like to think Bungie and Sony would know as much too. Marathon is a niche within a niche.
Don’t forget, outside of Arc Raiders, extraction shooters are still a niche—look at Escape from Tarkov, Hunt: Showdown, Grey Zone Warfare, and so on. You’ll see relatively small but active communities in it for the long haul, with slow growth.
While Arc Raiders cast a wide net, emphasising PvE, collaboration, and stumbling into social-sim-like interactions, Marathon is through and through an unforgiving PvP extraction shooter. You will die often, and you will lose all your loot. There’s no safe pocket to hang on to salvage even a little progress on a failed run. And yes, all your progress is wiped at the end of a three-month season.
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Doubling down, Bungie’s post-launch plans kicked off with a highly competitive Ranked mode and Cryo Archive, one of the most intense, hardcore pieces of content I’ve seen in any game ever. Neither mode is helped by it being in a high-stakes extraction shooter.
It’s almost as if Bungie didn’t look at the engagement numbers for Destiny’s endgame content, or just didn’t care; challenging, communication-driven raids are superb, but they’re built for a minority of players. Marathon’s that age-old predicament turned into a big-budget game.
At its core, Marathon is not a game designed for most people. From an active player’s perspective, you know what? I love how niche and hyper-specific Marathon is. It’s built for a certain type of person, and if you fit the bill, you’ll adore it. We need more games dedicated to one, very particular vision. Of course, that inherently limits the potential audience, and I’d be baffled if those in charge of all the macro and microscopic designs that led us here didn’t consider how that would play into its success.
Bungie’s stated it’s in it for the long haul, but what worries me is that Sony has shown time and time again that it’s not willing to settle for anything less than perfection when it comes to its live-service ambitions. That’s to say, it’s since scaled back most of its plans, pulling the plug on released and unrealised games with little hesitation.
Does Marathon meet Sony’s targets? Who knows. Developing a niche extraction shooter with a AAA budget sure was an interesting start, though. But Marathon is an excellent shooter, and it’s exactly the type of game that could sustain a small but devout player base in the long term if the powers that be let it. The developers have been very reactive to feedback post-launch, and I’m sure there’s some great content lined up in future seasons to build on what’s here. You could say it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
For once, Sony has to prove it’s willing to actually stick with a project. And if Sony’s not going to stand by it, then what was the point of acquiring Bungie and letting it continue down this path for years?
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