Analyst Rhyss Elliott of Alinea Analytics estimates that Marathon has sold 1.2 million copies across PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC, with the overwhelming majority of those sales coming from Steam.
In a report posted to X/Twitter, Elliott reckons Marathon “hasn’t exactly made the splash Sony and Bungie wanted, even if the game underneath the surface is a MASTERWORK of design.” Our Marathon review, sitting pretty at 4.5/5, is in agreement. (I love it, too.)
“My answer: Players understand the Arc Raiders loop within 30 minutes, while Marathon’s UI acts as a massive filter, chewing up newcomers and spitting them out before they can experience the depth of Bungie’s signature gunplay and Marathon’s awesome gameplay loop,” he says.
- Arc Raiders Steam player peak – 481,966 (four months ago)
- Arc Raiders Steam 24-hour player peak – 125,795
- Marathon Steam player peak – 88,337 (19 days ago)
- Marathon Steam 24-hour player peak – 44,371
Reported play times and slowing CCU decline suggest that the folks who’ve broken through Marathon’s wall are having fun and are here to say, Elliott finds. PvP games can be sticky, and Marathon will stick to you like hot tar if you let it.
“After peaking at 478K total [daily active users] on its first Saturday, Marathon has settled into a respectable rhythm, holding 345K DAUs as of yesterday and averaging 380K DAUs across the weekend,” he adds.
“On Steam, Marathon’s average playtime has climbed to 27.8 hours, significantly outpacing the console averages on PS5 (16.5h) and Xbox (17.3h). Even more telling than the averages: 22% of the Steam audience has surged past the 50-hour mark, and nearly 7% have already logged over 100 hours.”
For most games, these would be incredible numbers. For Bungie’s only non-Destiny release in over a decade, developed by a team based in the costly Bellevue area and which reached hundreds of developers over the course of more than four or five years, released at a time when Destiny 2 itself is facing the sort of player dip that Bungie once defined as game-threatening, these numbers look less than incredible.
But that comes with a few caveats, as we can’t just estimate profits at 1.2 million multiplied by $40, the base cost of the game. These are unofficial figures, they don’t reflect other forms of monetization (the battle pass, premium skins, and so on), and we don’t know how much has been taken out for platform fees. We don’t know Bungie or Sony’s internal targets, nor can we pinpoint the game’s development budget. But Elliott’s assessment, not a huge splash, especially on PS5, feels fair.
“We’ve sportified Steam charts” according to Warframe boss, who sees gamers obsessing over player counts the way “baseball freaks” dig into batting averages.
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