Bungie's Marathon Locks In March 2026 Release Date on PS5, Priced at $40

Uff. Ok let’s see

The PS5 and PC title will launch with a price tag of $39.99 / €39.99 / £34.99, which the developer assures will entitle all players to "a roadmap of free updates as the year progresses".

Wait, did they cancel the Xbox release?

This is irrelevant since I have no intention of getting involved with Marathon, but I see they’ve done something right at least. One of the myriad of reasons I dislike live service games is the fomo element when it comes to battle passes, in-game unlocks, timed rewards etc.

So seeing them state upfront that battle passes don’t expire and previous stuff can be repurchased at a later date by new people coming into the game is a big ‘win’, if you want to call it that. This way of doing things is obviously the best way as it screws over the least amount of players, and I wish all these games operated under this structure.

From what I'm watching in the video it looks much better.

Have the HellDivers model for content drops and you have a chance. It was smart of them to make sure nothing is Time-walled. For all the Bungie mistakes they still make the best feeling boom sticks in the industry imo. Now just dont be greedy turds and keep the content up and you might have a winner

Its a Marathon not a Snickers 👍

Now, from what I see, Marathon gives me the vibe of „not terrible, not great“. Boringly good, with a decent player base?

That would still be not good enough to justify Bungie‘s acquisition.

Now I know Destiny 3 is in pre development (kinda) then I want to Marathon to do well so I can get D3, that's fair right?

Very much interested in this one. I think the art style looks super cool and marrying Bungie gunplay with an extraction shooter sounds great.

That said, they'll need an open beta to get as many players hands-on to convince them to buy it. This is not a "sight unseen" type of game.

@Marquez I agree with you. People tend not to talk about just how good the game play in a bungie game is.

I’ve been playing the beta. And it’s pretty good, if someone would like Arc Raiders, it’s familiar, just first person. I’m glad it’s $40. That’s what I was thinking it should’ve been offered at anyways.

I don’t really understand the knack against the game. I play with an open mind. And it’s fun, you have multiple classes to choose from with their own abilities to level up. I think it’s a good game.

I think it looks cool and i’m curious and cautiously optimistic especially reading some of reactions to the latest beta. Price is good as well.

I just want a good fps from Sony again. I wish they’d revive the Killzone franchise, but until then i hope this turns out good.

“Marathon's Rewards Passes will not expire, and you’ll be able purchase and unlock prior Passes," it reveals.”

That’s definitely good. Wasnt that what people disliked about Destiny 2? At least they’re not going to pull that sh*t anymore.

Edit: I just watched the 23 min deep dive video, and i’m actually way more excited about it now. The world and backstory seems very interesting! The gunplay looked good and satisfying, the graphics seem better than initial showings. There’s this cool gameplay feature where bodies that are killed stay where they are, and slowly deteriorate, so if there’s a fresh body on the floor you know that the enemy might still be close by.

All in all, i’m pretty excited about the game now

I’m super excited to play the full release, but I just hope they’ve really worked on getting the game across well to people early and smoothed out the onboarding and direction. I wouldn’t have minded if they’d waited to summer for release and really worked on wowing people on the early game.

@TrollOfWar
It’s not canceled. It was going to be for PC, PS5 and Xbox. Anything that could support the game I’m sure they would want it on it.

Concord 2: Electric Boogaloo.

@T-Bone09 I'm wondering why Xbox is left out in the article, while PC is mentioned?

Setting the same price point as arc raiders is sensible (it would have gone down terribly priced higher) I still can’t see how they would have changed the game enough to persuade the masses for it to be a huge success though.

Marathon-in-name-only will be about a 0.4 on the Concord scale. Where 0 is a total and complete success and 1 is…well, Concord.

£35 is juuuust about competitively priced enough for this to have a chance. But I don’t see it lasting more than a year still, just doesn’t smell of a hit.

Really shows you how much faith Sony has in this game, they didn't even pay for a spot at the game awards.

@Americansamurai1 Probably have it's own mini SoP, I know it's not the same as the game awards but still

@TrollOfWar
I just think it was just wasn’t mentioned. But it’s still coming out for Xbox since it was previously on their site showing the September release.

Credit where it's due, visually it looks much better compared to the April reveal footage. This genre isn't for me, but I can also see ARC Raider's success having a positive effect on Marathon. A rising tide raises all boats and all. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how it does.

Also, people who are saying this will be the next Concord have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

@Jrs1 showing your age there sunshine 😅

@T-Bone09 Okay, I guess the article is inaccurate then.

I am truly sorry, but if the game needs online to be played, then $40 is WAY too expensive.

Personally, since Babylon's Fall, I recommend to anyone to avoid buying those games. If it flops, the servers will be shut down 10 months after and you will never be able to play it again. It is a scam that way too many players accept IMO.

@Oram77 maybe Sony usually has a sop in January/February

This game might be wildly successful. It looks significantly better than the test in October. Comments on the video through YouTube are overwhelmingly positive. Very excited for this one.

@datamonkey Haha aye true 😄

The game design/artwork is just not for me. I hope it does well though.

@KillerIsD34D

Considering it’s a pvp game. Then yes it’s online.

First impressions matter.

I don't think Marathon has a chance of success beyond launch period videos on YouTube ***** on it. This isn't some single player fraud that they can fix over the course of year Ala cyberpunk. It's a live service title that has to be compelling at launch. This lost the hype and now is releasing under the cloud of having to essentially pull it and rework it because of all the negative sentiment surrounding it.

It won't last a year.

At that price il be there day one, especially after watching the deep dive. I couldn't click with Arc Raiders so hopefully I can with this.

@KundaliniRising333 Thats just not true at all. 90%+ of video game payers will have not even heard of the game yet. The narrative around an early closed alpha is almost irrelavent in the long run.

How many people remember the Arc Raiders closed test from 2023 when it was basically rubbish? Or that was a pve f2p game supposedly releasing in 2022 but just didn't work.

@Oram77 Destiny might have a best feeling gunplay in gaming history imo

Even the price is the same as Concord.

Sony really hurts their brand by repeatedly leveraging PS Plus to treat what would otherwise be a F2P game like a subscription MMO. Many people will not care that Sony is affixing a price tag to this game, effectively forcing PS5 gamers to also pay a subscription to play it, many others will. And after they've finally had enough of this repeated behavior they'll find a new platform to play games on. And the people already on that platform, they'll never consider the platform that wants to charge them for the privelege to play their online only games.

@KundaliniRising333 the same was said about arc raiders. I myself was sceptical as to how good arc raiders would be but I took a punt on it and I really,really like it. I'll be giving marathon a go for sure as at that price point it's worth a try.

This game looks to sterile and lacking in any personality.

On my avoid list

Even if I was interested (which I'm really not tbh) the first 3 Months of the year are STACKED... I've already got like 10+ games within that Jan-Mar timeframe of 2026 to buy/play so it's an easy skip at Launch 🤷‍♂️

They would have to pay me to play this. I just don't like the art style.

This game faces so may different problems and issues, but right now it has the massive hurdle of trying to convince people as to why they'd want to play this troubled extraction shooter over the rather excellent ARC Raiders.

I wish Sony would have sucked up the initial cost and made Marathon free to play to give it a fighting chance (or stick it on PS Plus at the very least), but I guess we'll have to wait til March to see what happens.

From what I've played I suspect this is going to score around a 7 from most review sites, and I'm not sure it has enough going for it to keep players interested long term.

@Pat_trick ye it will die just like concord did i give it a month

I dont like the stabilo colors but i know Bungie has the best gunplay. Might give it a try.

I like Bungie's FPS games a lot but Arc Raiders showed me that I don't really like Extraction shooters.
Too much time spent looting, crafting, managing your inventory and storage, then losing it all and the annoyance of having to start again from scratch...

I think it has a chance b/c of the Bungie name. I don't even play anything that they make but I know of them. And I think the Marathon name might help as well. And the $40 price. And being on PC and Xbox.

Whether it is or not who knows, but it will do better than Concord and Fairgame$ or whatever it was called.

And if it doesn't do well, maybe Sony will finally be done with this.😩

I’ll be honest, I didn’t give this a chance in hell a few months ago, it just looked like an utter shambles, but going by what has been shown now and the overwhelmingly positive feedback from people that have already played this, it may not be the huge failure that I and probably a lot of people were expecting. It still has to release of course and still has to make sales numbers, but definitely not as convinced of a failure at launch as I was. There is something I
Would like to see though, a Dual Sense control pad for the games launch. With all the crazy colours that are in this game, that pad has a potential to be amazing!

I think it’s another Sony live service failure.

Luckily for bungie it can’t be as bad as concord. But it most likely means Sony will take full control of Bumgie - now will that be good for destiny 3?

After the plagiarisms fiasco and the frankly terrible PR, this game is dead in the water and Bungie know it. The Concord price point of $40 for a generic-looking live service game is the final nail in the coffin.

Should have remodeled the game to prioritise cosmetic microtransactions, potentially make meaty future content paid content but release it day and date on one of the ps+ tiers. You'll guarantee a big initial audience that way and then it's down to the quality of the game to keep people playing and get them to spend.

Besides, we all know it will be on ps+ in some form within 18 months regardless of how well it does anyway.

@Oram77 What are you on about? Bungie is literally renowned for their gunplay above all other elements of their titles.

Probably needs to be £29.99 but I do hope it delivers as the studio needs a hit and fun game

With Arc Raiders killing it i can't see this doing well at all.

@Silenos You do realize that HellDivers 2 and Arc Raiders both are $40 games?
Multiplayer only games shouldn’t be $60-$70 anyways.

On top of that. I’ve been playing the beta and it is rather fun. The people I play with agree as well. They are the ones playing Arc Raiders. Not seeing the doom and gloom you’ve been hearing about this game.

@MFTWrecks That's what I was saying.....

Bungie gunplay is top-tier and that’s a really good price point. Interesting. I hope this is more PvE than PvP and that will sell it for me.

"free updates". I always chuckle, then shiver when I read this. I know it's incredibly stupid to specify an update is free, but infinite greed could sell bug fixes someday.

@Oram77 "People tend not to talk about just how good the game play in a bungie game is."

Coulda fooled me.

@kyleforrester87 "People tend not to talk about just how good the game play in a bungie game is."

I am not a multiplayer guy because of age, lost my twitchiness, but I tried it this weekend. There is something there. I am bad at these games and I wanted to come back for more. I wish I could say more but I kept thinking about it when I was offline. Glutton for punishment I guess.

Not my cup of tea despite i kinda like the retro-futuristic artstyle.

So good luck to Bungie 🫡

This game is dead on alive, imho.

It’ll be interesting to see how it fares regardless of my opinion.

DOA for me, I'm afraid. Absolutely no interest in this whatsoever. Players will jump back into ARC Raiders within a week of this releasing.

Suprisingly had a decent time with the test over the weekend. Took a long while and a lot of frustration to get the flow of what I needed to do but the core gameplay was solid. I'm willing to give his a shot

Looking forward to this. Hopefully got DiabloIV done by march 😂

Throw another one on the fire. How many more of these games need to fail before they figure it out. The fans already dislike it.

Which one will die first marathon or highguard?

Everyone saying Highgaurd is the next big flop, but with that price tag I bet Marathon doesn’t even last the year.