After a six-month delay from the original launch date of September 23, 2025 to March 5, 2026, Bungie's Marathon was released earlier this month, and it seems like the developer plans to continue working and improving the game for a long time, including the potential addition of frame generation.
The game's critical acclaim has been quite positive, though not quite stellar, with an average Metacritic score of 81. Our own David Carcasole enjoyed the game more than most fellow critics, rating it 9 out of 10 in an incredibly detailed review:
Bungie's extraction shooter reboot of its classic Marathon series is easily one of the best releases in 2026. Its top-level gunplay and extremely rewarding gameplay loop that centers on strong gameplay experiences over better loot, paired with an atmosphere and world design that does an incredible job of weaving narrative into a multiplayer PvPvE setting, make it a must-play for first-person shooter fans and anyone feeling tired of the current live service landscape. For all its rough edges, there's really nothing else that looks, sounds, or plays quite like Marathon, and it's all the better for it.
User review scores on Steam are also very positive (88%): over 25K users have given it a thumbs up. However, the game doesn't seem to be resonating in the same way on the other platforms. According to early estimates from Alinea Analytics, the game has sold 1.2 million units to date, 800K of which were sold on Steam - leaving just 217K on PlayStation 5 and 133K on Xbox Series S and X.
This had fans a bit worried about the future of the game. For its part, though, Bungie is all-in with post-launch support. In the official PC performance guide, they promised "many years" of steady improvements across the entire game:
While we are very proud of what we have accomplished with the overall look and feel of the game since Alpha, we are in it for the long haul with Marathon. We look forward to many years of steady improvements to every aspect of the game. Thank you for taking this journey with us!
Ultimately, it will be up to parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment to choose what to do with Marathon. Still, the PlayStation division has already canceled enough live service games (The Last of Us Online, Spider-Man: The Great Web, Twisted Metal, the fantasy co-op game in development at London Studio, the game in development at Deviation Games, the game in development at Bend Studio, and an untitled God of War live service game). Marathon's launch may not have been exceptional in terms of sales, but it's also far from a disaster, and there's plenty of precedent for live service games slowly rising to prominence post-release.
On that note, Bungie said it is evaluating adding frame generation technologies, though it will prioritize other performance improvements, especially to boost CPU performance.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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