Marathon Was Reportedly Played by 2.2 Million Players in Launch Month, 1.1 Million on PC

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Although Sony and Bungie haven’t shared official sales numbers for their new PvPvE shooter, Marathon, analysts at Ampere estimate around 2.2 million people played the game in its first month. The breakdown shows approximately 1.1 million players on PC, 660,000 on PlayStation 5, and 525,000 on Xbox Series X/S. This data comes from a report by The Game Business.

The most recent sales data for Marathon comes from Alinea Analytics, which estimates the game has sold approximately 1.2 million copies, generating $55 million in revenue for Bungie. Most of those sales – around 800,000 copies – were on Steam. The PlayStation 5 was the second best-selling platform with 217,000 copies sold, followed by Xbox Series X/S at 133,000 copies.

Notably, predictions for how well the game will sell both show the PlayStation 5 version coming in second, even though Sony owns the game’s developer, Bungie, making it a first-party title.

Jacob Navok, a former business director at Square Enix, shared on social media that the low number of players currently playing Marathon, combined with Sony’s minimal marketing efforts for the game, suggests Sony isn’t confident in Bungie.

He reported a significant loss of nearly 2,000 players in the last 24 hours, calling it “brutal.” He had previously believed the game’s player 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 success.

Someone else pointed out that the game Marathon has been incredibly popular on Xbox Series X/S since it came out. Because of this, they suggested Microsoft is better at marketing than 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 title, suggesting Microsoft would prominently feature it on its storefront and include it in the Game Pass subscription service. The author feels that at the very least, the game should be offered for free to PlayStation 5 owners.

Looking at which games Sony releases gives us a clue about their future plans. It seems they’re pulling back from releasing story-driven, single-player games on consoles other than PlayStation. However, they still want to release online multiplayer games on many different platforms to keep the player base large and active.

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2026-05-01 15:11