Marathon Sales Reach 1.2 Million Copies, But the Game Has Yet to Find Its Big Audience

Bungie's extraction shooter Marathon has sold an estimated 1.2 million copies worldwide since launch, generating around $55 million in gross revenue across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

The numbers come from Rhys Elliott, Head of Market Analysis at Alinea Analytics, who published a detailed breakdown of the game's performance.

The sales split across platforms looks like this:

• Steam (PC): approximately 800,000 copies (around 70% of total sales)

• PlayStation 5: approximately 217,000 copies (around 19%)

• Xbox Series X/S: approximately 133,000 copies (around 11%)

That PC dominance is pretty striking, especially considering Marathon is technically a first-party Sony title developed by Sony-owned Bungie.

According to reports, Sony has been pulling back on PC releases for its single-player titles, but multiplayer games like Marathon are staying multiplatform. Looking at these Steam numbers, it is easy to see why.

A Dedicated Crowd, But Not a Breakout Hit

The sales figures tell one part of the story. The player retention data tells another. Despite a rough start with many players bouncing off the game early, those who stuck around are genuinely hooked. According to Alinea Analytics, Marathon is holding around 345,000 daily active users, with weekend averages climbing to about 380,000 DAUs.

The average playtime numbers are worth noting too:

• Steam: 27.8 hours average playtime

• PS5: 16.5 hours average playtime

• Xbox: 17.3 hours average playtime

On Steam, 22% of players have crossed the 50-hour mark, and nearly 7% have already logged over 100 hours.

Why Marathon Did Not Hit Like Arc Raiders

One of the bigger talking points in the gaming space has been how Marathon compares to Arc Raiders, its main competitor in the extraction shooter genre. Both launched around a similar period, but Arc Raiders pulled significantly further ahead in terms of early sales momentum.

According to an official statement from developer Embark Studios and Nexon, Arc Raiders has sold over 12 million copies since its release in October 2025.

The core reason, as per Elliott's analysis, comes down to first impressions. Arc Raiders is approachable. Players reportedly understand its loop within 30 minutes. Marathon, on the other hand, drops players into a complex ecosystem with a UI that, as Elliott describes it, is "functionally uninformative," forcing users to manually hover over identical icons just to identify basic gear or weapon mods.

The Server Slam data backs this up. Arc Raiders saw an 80% jump in copies sold during its three-day Server Slam event. Marathon only saw a 49% increase across four days after its own Slam. By the time both games launched, Arc Raiders had nearly double the Steam footprint of Marathon.

The Bungie Faithful Are Here

One interesting trend in the data is who is actually playing Marathon. The overlap with other Bungie titles is significant:

• 78.2% of Steam players have also played Destiny 2

• 74.2% of PS5 players overlap with Destiny 2

• 82.7% of Xbox players overlap with Destiny 2

• 85.7% of Xbox players have played Halo Infinite

• 55.9% of Steam players have also tried Arc Raiders

• 62.7% of Steam players have played Helldivers 2

Bungie leaned hard on its legacy in marketing, and it worked, at least for pulling in its existing fanbase. The challenge now is holding that audience in a high-stakes PvP environment when most of them spent the last decade enjoying PvE power fantasies in Destiny.

What Comes Next

Forbes writer Paul Tassi, citing sources close to Bungie, noted that there are no current plans to scale back content development. Work is already underway on future seasons.

As Tassi wrote, "This was never going to be a Highguard/Concord situation, and it was ridiculous to think so. That doesn't mean Marathon is the true hit it needs to be, but that's a different conversation."

The next six months will likely determine whether this becomes a long-term live service success story or a lesson in how even great games can struggle without the right entry point.