Sony Aims to “Improve the Performance” of Marathon by Focusing on Content, Player Acquisition

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Despite recent financial losses linked to its purchase of Bungie, Sony intends to continue supporting the game Marathon. During the company’s earnings call, CFO Lin Tao highlighted the game’s positive reception, noting its Metacritic score of 82 and a 90% positive rating from players on Steam, as reported by Yahoo! Finance.

Tao explained that while Bungie’s games didn’t perform as well as anticipated financially, leading to a revised business plan and a write-down of assets (excluding goodwill), the reception to their new game, Marathon, has been very positive. It currently has a Metacritic score of 82 and over 90% of Steam player reviews are positive, with strong player engagement and retention rates.

I’m really excited to hear what Tao has planned for the future of Marathon! Apparently, they’re focusing on making the game even better for us fans. That means more content to play, improvements to how the game actually feels when you’re playing it, and hopefully, bringing in a whole bunch of new players to enjoy it with us!

We plan to make the game even better by keeping our most dedicated players engaged with new content and improved gameplay, while also attracting more players overall.

Sony’s latest financial report showed a 12% increase in revenue overall, but the company also experienced a $560 million loss this quarter, and $765 million for the year, due to its acquisition of Bungie. Sony is calling these losses “impairment losses” and doesn’t anticipate they will continue, predicting a 30% revenue increase next year.

Sony and Bungie haven’t publicly shared any official data on how well Marathon is performing or how many people are playing. However, the analytics company Ampere estimates that about 2.2 million people played the game in its first month. Of those players, roughly 1.1 million were on PC, 660,000 were on PlayStation 5, and 525,000 were on Xbox Series X/S.

So, I heard from Julia Nardin, the creative director at Marathon, that they’ve got a bunch of ideas for the game planned out for the next few years at least. She mentioned things aren’t totally finalized yet, and they actually want to involve us, the players, in deciding what comes next. She says it’s all about making the live service experience really special and collaborative – which sounds awesome!

As a big fan, I’m really happy to hear that the developers are planning to keep all of Marathon’s story content available. Apparently, unlike what happened with Destiny 2 and the Beyond Light expansion, they don’t want to ‘vault’ any parts of the story. That means if someone starts playing a year from now, they won’t miss out on anything – they’ll be able to experience the whole thing, which is awesome!

Nardin explained that players should be able to start playing Marathon whenever they want. The game will always let you explore the history of Tau Ceti while also experiencing what’s happening now. The developers want each new season to be easy for both new and existing players to jump into, so everyone can understand the story no matter how long the game has been running.

Marathon is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Read our review for more details.

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2026-05-08 17:41