Can Marathon Overcome Its Premium Price Tag?

Marathon’s grand gameplay reveal had the typical Bungie flavor players have come to expect. With such a vivid, eye-catching art style and explosive-looking gunplay, it seems to have at least some of the magic that has made the Bellevue-based developer one of the most prestigious studios in the industry. But that magic is going to come at a (currently unknown) price since Marathon won’t be a free-to-play title.

It’s typical for a premium studio like Bungie to put out premium games, but times have changed and Marathon is contending with a new market that has shifted radically under Bungie’s theoretical feet.The most obvious warning comes from Concord, the disastrous 2024 hero shooter from the now-defunct Firewalk Studios. Sony Interactive Entertainment completely misunderstood the market by charging $39.



99 for a hero shooter when just about every alternative was free. Its questionable hero design and relatively standard gameplay were also roadblocks, but the trouble it had just getting in front of players was likely the biggest contributing factor that sent Concord to an early grave. It was an expensive miscalculation, complete with pricey CG trailers, a promise of regular well-animated cutscenes, and hundreds of developers on the payroll.

RELATED: Bungie Reveals Why Marathon Won’t Have “Toxic” FeatureSome of the circumstances surrounding Marathon are quite different — it’s from a developer with a decades-long track record of making well-regarded shooters and early impressions have been relatively positive — but it’s difficult to ignore the parallels. Outside of the superficial similarities of the two teams being based in the same city and Firewalk being co-founded by a former Bungie employee, both are incredibly expensive shooters built by hundreds of people over the span of multiple years under Sony’s purview, with a lavish CGI trailer to boot. Marathon’s creative director Joe Ziegler stated that around 300 people have been working on Marathon for more than four years.

Concord’s lead character designer Jon Weisnewski said the failed shooter was in development for around eight years, and the team had around 150 to 170 when Sony shut it down (however, it’s unclear how many of them consistently worked on Concord during that whole stretch).The amount of developers and money behind Marathon gives quite a stark contrast from others in the extraction shooter genre. It’s a genre that is mostly propelled by smaller teams with smaller budgets, as evidenced by the extraction genre page on Steam, where many of the titles are noticeably not directly competing with AAA games or from well-known developers.

Marathon sure looks like an expensive game.A decent portion of them, aside from hits like Delta Force and Dark & Darker, have a premium price tag like Marathon, but Marathon likely requires a higher return to be considered a success; more money in requires more money out. All of these expenses aside, though, it still leaves a game that is the first true test of Sony’s $3.

6 billion purchase of Bungie. There have been Destiny 2 expansions since, and Bungie has assisted Sony with its live service push, but a new game like this is likely going to have more pressure on it to succeed. Acquiring a company for billions of dollars (which multiple anonymous developers said was an overestimate) is an investment for the future.

It’s hard not to see Marathon playing a key role in that since it is Bungie’s next premier project.Marathon is also being sold as somewhat of a long-term investment that starts small and grows over time. Ziegler spoke about how Bungie is committed to working on the game through post-launch seasons and noted that, while admitting that everyone assesses games differently, he hopes that players will factor these future plans into Marathon’s value.

It’s launching with three maps and six characters with unique abilities, and it remains to be seen if that will be enough, especially since it appears as though Bungie is going to be building some of the plane while it is in the air. Guiding the game through community feedback is not unheard of or a bad strategy, but it might be hard to pull people in if there’s not enough there at launch and doubly so if there’s a monetary barrier. It wouldn’t be unheard of if a content-lite experience at launch for a premium price tag turns some off for good, regardless of its roadmap.

Destiny 2 still has a lot of fans.Bungie has not had a strong last few years, either. It laid off about 100 people in October 2023 and then 220 more in July 2024, while also reportedly canceling an unannounced Warframe-like project known as Payback.

Some of these stumbles stemmed from Destiny 2 allegedly missing its revenue targets by 45%. Even though The Final Shape was acclaimed, Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion was widely regarded as disappointing and was something even CEO Pete Parsons called out in Bungie’s blog about the layoffs (in addition to saying the company was spread too thin and had exceeded “financial safety margins”).Bungie does at least have its name to lean back on, a legacy built on slick art styles and best-in-class shooting mechanics.

Destiny 2 also, even almost eight years after launch, still gets around 30,000 people per day just on Steam. There’s a well-earned pedigree here and it’s entirely plausible that at least some of Destiny 2’s player base will migrate over to Marathon because of that reputation. Even “some” in this instance would be a sizeable margin, given how many people play Destiny 2.

The upcoming tests could also inspire confidence in players if they see Bungie implement feedback, thus giving them more permission to buy into Bungie’s vision.Marathon’s future is unclear; anyone claiming it will assuredly fail is being woefully hyperbolic. The goodwill Bungie has built up over decades and the way in which Marathon is playing to the studio’s strengths will provide an undeniable boost that many other developers can’t even dream of.

The main question is whether or not that will be enough and if there are unrealistic expectations behind the scenes. It seems challenging for any multiplayer-focused shooter to overcome a premium price tag in 2025, especially when a lot of its competition is free or has an established base (or both). There’s no doubt that, despite what Marathon has going for it, it’s going to have a tough time breaking through.

It might just come down to whether or not players can stick with Marathon for the long haul and, coincidentally, see this as a marathon and not a sprint.The post Can Marathon Overcome Its Premium Price Tag? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

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