Sony hasn’t had a ton of success with shooters. WhileHelldivers IIis still going strong, the company’s last foray into the genre crashed out two weeks after launch spelled the end of developer Firewalk Studios.
Sony’s acquisition ofHaloandDestinycreators Bungie should have been the shot in the arm the company needed to get back on top. But things aren’t looking so rosy, prompting concerns that we could soon have anotherConcordsituation on our hands.
Bungie Is Bringing BackMarathon
Before the success ofHalo: Combat Evolvedon Microsoft’s original Xbox console, Bungie was a Macintosh developer. The company was recognized for earlier titles like 1993’sPathways into Darknessand then set about developing a first-person shooter for the Apple Macintosh (and later Apple Pippin) calledMarathon.
The game stood out at a time when the first-person shooter was a relatively new phenomenon. The game was technically impressive for the time, with dynamic lighting, free mouse look, and a motion sensor depicting enemy locations.
The game’s story isn’t a million miles away fromHaloeither. The game takes place in 2794 aboard an earth colony ship known as the UESC Marathon. You play the role of a security officer when an alien attack renders much of the ship inoperable. You’ll have to fight and fix things up if the mission is to be a success.
Bungie’s success withMarathonsaw two more entries (with the second game receiving a Windows 95 release) before the studio was snapped up by Microsoft in 2000, a year afterHalo: Combat Evolvedwas first shown at Macworld Expo 1999. After being cut loose from Microsoft in 2007, the company went on to developDestinyand its sequel, uncoupled itself from a 10-year publishing deal with Activision Blizzard (withDestinyrights intact), only to get snapped up by Sony in 2022.
This is where we currently find ourselves, with the company developing a modern-day sequel to the game that helped put it on the radar all those years ago. This also happens to be a game that Sony is pinning a lot of hopes on, considering the high-profile failure of online hero shooterConcordin 2024.
The Shooter Market Is Huge But Crowded
In the years sinceMarathon’s 1994 release, the first-person shooter market has exploded. Countless titles have reinvented the genre, fromQuaketoHalf-Life, through to modern multiplayer hits likeOverwatchandValorant.
As a result of the genre’s enduring popularity, everyone wants a piece of the pie. Unfortunately, there’s only so much pie to go around. Standing out in a sea of highly polished and technically impressive games is tough, even for a company like Bungie. Not only do you have to produce something that people want to play, you have to tempt them away from their current favorites.
Bungie’sMarathonreboot is a little different. This is a multiplayer first-person extraction shooter with a hero component. It takes place on the planet settled by the UESC Marathon that featured in earlierMarathontitles, Tau Ceti, after a period of unrest during which many of the settlers disappeared. Within this colony, some humans have given up their bodies in favor of enhanced cybernetic versions and become known as Runners. These Runners have to scavenge the colony for resources, artifacts, and other loot before getting out safely.
Marathonis arguably the highest-profile extraction shooter to date. Though Ubisoft’sThe Divisionand its “Dark Zone” gameplay is often credited with “inventing” the genre, extraction shooters have reached new heights with games likeEscape from TarkovandDelta Forcewinning over fans and dominating the streaming charts for years now.
Bungie and Sony are chasing this success, and when it comes to gaming trends that’s not necessarily a position you want to find yourself in. In fact, this specific criticism was leveled atConcordeven before its release. In that case, Sony and Firewalk Studios were chasing success in the hero shooter space, a genre dominated by the likes ofOverwatchandApex Legends(and since,Marvel Rivals).
One could argue that you need equal parts vision to innovate, and equal parts luck to find yourself in the right place at the right time.Hadesarrived right around the point where the world went roguelite mad,Fortnitestepped into the comfortable niche hollowed out byPUBGand its contemporaries, whileREPOis enjoying its time in the spotlight after gamesPhasmophobiahelped to firmly establish the “frights with friends” co-op horror genre.
Given how long games take to make and how costly they have become, you run the very real risk of missing a trend entirely when you come from behind. In the case ofMarathon, things are looking even worse following Bungie’s announcement of an indefinite delay in June 2025.
Many Similar Titles Are Free-to-Play
It costs nothing to jump into some of the biggest shooters in the world right now. This includesCall of Duty: Warzone,Apex Legends,Delta Force,Fortnite, andMarvel Rivals. These are the games thatMarathonwill be going up against.
The only problem is thatMarathonwon’t be a free-to-play game. The only thing that Bungie has announced with regards to price right now is thatMarathonwill be a “premium” productbut not a “full-priced title”—whatever that means. This was all announced in April long before the project’s indefinite delay, so who knows what will end up happening.
Once again, this is reminiscent of comments made aboutConcordin 2024.Marvel Rivalslaunched in December, only three months after theConcordshutdown, and it has become a force to be reckoned with in the space. While the game has managed to earn itself a loyal fanbase, the free-to-play model plays a significant role.
Let’s not pretend that these games aren’t highly profitable operations. Though gamers have been soured on game-breaking pay-to-win mechanics, cosmetics and battle passes continue to ensure that these games turn a profit. Without this, free-to-play games cannot survive andgo the way ofRumbleverseandKnockout City.
It would be refreshing to see a game likeMarathonsucceed in a market wherethe biggest games trade on FOMOand other predatory monetization practices. After all, Bungie saw massive success withDestiny 2, a game that started out as a premium product, transitioned to free-to-play, and still has content being produced for it in 2025 (with further expansions planned for 2026).
MarathonIs Already Mired in Controversy
That success, however, feels like a million miles away right now. One thing that Bungie is struggling with, outside of carrying Sony’s torch, is its rocky reputation.
In May, Bungie concluded its closed alpha playtest after inviting fans and the press to try out an early build of the game. While it’s important not to draw too many conclusions based on a pre-release version of the game, many testers came away with lukewarm first impressions.
Most agreed that the gunplay is solid, but doesn’t stand out (many noting that they expected more from the studio responsible forDestiny). Some queried the need for a “hero” approach to an extraction shooter. Others complained that the game felt brutally hard, particularly for solo players. It seems that Bungie made some odd choices too, like including strong aim assist for PC players (something that was “fixed” during the beta).
The wider community reaction was largely a negative one, with player numbers dropping to around 20% of what the game managed at launch and Twitch streams dropping off in turn. Many queried whether there was enough content here to justify a premium release, something that Bungie hadalready asserted. This reaction led to the eventual delaying ofMarathonindefinitely.
But the bad news doesn’t end there. In May, news broke of an artist called AntirealrevealingthatBungie had plagiarized their work, with designs appearing essentially unchanged not only in gameplay footage but in the game’s press kit and on the homepage. Thisisn’t the first timeBungie has beenaccusedof doing this either.
Bungie responded by claiming that “a former Bungie artist included these in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in-game” and that the company is “committed to do right by the artist.” It’s hard to ignore the fact thatMarathon’s entire visual style—glitchy text, strong typefaces, bright colors, retro modernism—seems to beheavily influenced by this artist.
CanMarathonStill Succeed?
Marathon’s failure or success is far from guaranteed. I’m hopeful that Bungie can rescue the project, pay the artist they wronged, and replicate the sort of success thatDestinyenjoyed.Marathoncertainly has a few things going for it thatConcordlacked, despite its rough first impressions and the bad taste that a plagiarism controversy can leave in your mouth.
Given Bungie’s track record, the studio has proven its ability to create interesting worlds. TheMarathonseries pulls from a body of lore that has already carried three whole games, even if that was 30 years ago.Marathon’s price point will likely have a big bearing on its success, but it would be good to see a pay-to-play shooter succeed among the sea of free-to-play titles.
UnlikeConcord,Marathonwill be a cross-platform title from launch with both Xbox Series X|S and Windows versions in the works. It also stands a chance of being the first extraction shooter to take the genre mainstream on consoles.Tarkovhas very much carved out its hardcore PC gamer niche, andDelta Forcestill hasn’t launched on consoles as of writing. Is there a chance thatMarathoncould do for extraction shooters whatFortnitedid for battle royales?
