If this news is confirmed, Marathon could be the final nail in Bungie‘s coffin. The game was supposed to have a really terrible result considering the huge expectations.
We haven’t received official Marathon sales results from Bungie or PlayStation yet, but Rhys Elliott provided very detailed data. The head of Alinea Analytics presented his own estimates, which, if confirmed, will be very disturbing news for developers and the entire project.
According to this information Marathon was supposed to sell only 1.2 million copies since its premiere, with the vast majority of them going to PC. As many as 800,000 players were supposed to buy the game on Steam, while the PlayStation community only makes up about 19% of all users. This clearly shows that the console version did not attract as many audiences as expected for such a large project.
Rhys Elliott points out that this is a very important signal for Sony. In his opinion, the situation clearly shows that PlayStation cannot treat its platform as the only pillar for online games and must continue to focus on multiplatform if it wants to build large communities around such productions.
In his opinion, the topic was already discussed during GDC, where the industry analyzed why Marathon was unable to convince players to the same extent as, for example, ARC Raiders. According to Elliott, one of the main problems is the user interface, which instead of encouraging, can discourage and hinder the first hours of play.
However, this does not mean that the game is a complete failure in terms of engagement. Data shows that after a difficult start, some players stay with the title for longer. Marathon peaked at 478,000 daily active players and is currently hovering around 345,000, with an average of 380,000 DAU over the weekend. On Steam, the average game time is 27.8 hours, while on PS5 it is 16.5 hours and on Xbox 17.3 hours. As many as 22% of PC players have exceeded 50 hours, and nearly 7% have already reached 100 hours.
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 situation of the published data was commented by Paul Tassi from the Forbes editorial office, who checked the details and “Sources at Bungie have confirmed that these numbers are very close to the real ones”.
From what I’ve been told, Bungie’s sales, cross-platform, and daily active user (DAU) numbers are very close to reality. The problem is… these numbers are overall lower than they should be – from launch to now – given the circumstances surrounding the game, namely its development time, costs, and Sony’s expectations for Bungie’s first new game based on the original series in a decade. This is also reality.
The journalist confirms that, at least currently, Sony has not decided to change its content plans. However, a lot may change soon.
