Marathon’s Lack of Marketing by Sony Indicates Lack of Faith, Says Former Square Enix Exec

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Despite moderate success with its new game, Marathon, Bungie may not have Sony’s full confidence. Jacob Navok, a former Square Enix business director, pointed out on social media that player numbers for the Steam version of Marathon are potentially declining. He believes this is due to a lack of marketing support from Sony.

He reported a significant loss of almost 2,000 users at its peak within the last 24 hours, calling it “brutal.” He had previously believed the user base would stabilize around 15,000, but now thinks it might fall to 10,000. He also noted that Sony isn’t actively promoting Marathon on the PlayStation 5 dashboard, despite having ample opportunity to do so. He believes this lack of marketing suggests Sony doesn’t have much confidence in the game’s performance.

A social media user named DomRock pointed out that Marathon was the most-played game on Xbox in April. They also suggested that the game might receive better promotion if Bungie belonged to Microsoft instead of Sony.

According to recent data, Marathon was the most played game on Xbox last month. The author believes that if Microsoft owned the game, it could become as popular as Halo. They criticize Sony’s lack of promotion for the game, suggesting Microsoft would prominently feature it on its storefront and include it in the Game Pass subscription service. The author feels Sony’s marketing efforts were lacking and that at the very least, the game should be offered for free to PlayStation 5 owners.

Last month’s report showed that Marathon has sold approximately 1.2 million copies since its launch, generating around $55 million in revenue for Bungie, according to Alinea Analytics. Most sales came through Steam, with an estimated 800,000 copies sold on that platform. The PlayStation 5 came in second with around 217,000 copies, followed by Xbox Series X/S with 133,000. Analyst Rhys Elliot pointed out that the fact a game from a Sony-owned studio didn’t reach 20 percent sales on PlayStation 5 is a significant observation.

According to Elliott, the fact that Marathon, a game made directly by Sony, isn’t selling well on PlayStation consoles is significant. It adds to the discussion about whether games should be exclusive to certain platforms or available on all. Despite reports that Sony might release fewer games on PC, it’s likely PlayStation Studios will continue making online games for multiple platforms.

An analyst noted that Marathon is gaining players at a slower rate compared to the popular PvPvE extraction shooter, ARC Raiders. It appears that problems with the game’s user interface and overall user experience were a major issue, but a recent server test event led to a 49% jump in sales, suggesting improvements could be effective.

Honestly, I think Bungie could’ve polished the beginning of the game a lot more if they’d had the beta test a little earlier. It felt really rushed! And the timing was just bad – Marathon came out only three days after the beta ended. That definitely hurt how well the game sold at launch, in my opinion.

You can find more information about Marathon in its recent update from earlier this month. We also have a review available for you to read.

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2026-04-30 16:11