We've seen a lot of estimates about Marathon's individual commercial performance, all of which has muddied the waters on whether the game has actually done well. Some charts have been more favourable, while the reality of its daily concurrent player numbers on Steam and its reported development costs tell a more negative story. Well, Sony's latest financial report spelled it out pretty clearly that Marathon and Bungie as a whole have underperformed. But it doesn't look like the company is giving up on the game anytime soon.
Sony reported a massive impairment loss of nearly $800 million due to Bungie in its last report, and during the earnings call portion of the report (via Yahoo Finance), chief financial officer and corporate executive officer Lin Tao stated quite clearly that "Bungie's title portfolio did not reach our expectations, so we downwardly revised our business plan and impaired the full amount of fixed assets related to Bungie except for goodwill."
But as we know, Marathon's launch wasn't all bad. If nothing else, Marathon has found a community of players who love it, who want to keep coming back to it. That community may be smaller than Sony and Bungie would like, but it's an accomplishment Sony recognizes, as Tao continues, "Player receptions to Marathon is strong, with the game receiving a Metacritic score of 82 and more than 90% of the player reviews on Steam being positive. Engagement metrics such as retention also remain at a high level."
"Going forward, we aim to improve the performance of the game by working to retain highly engaged core users through the introduction of additional content, further improvements in the gameplay experience, and expansion of the user base."
These comments are another positive indication that Marathon isn't going to be dropped on a moment's notice by Sony, and fans of the game can breathe for at least a little while before they should really be concerned that it is on the chopping block. We know that Bungie has a long-term vision for the game, so it's reassuring to hear that Sony intends to help it get there, at least for now.
That said, Marathon is not the first-party release that Sony is looking to when it comes to increasing revenue contributions from its first-party titles. That falls instead on Housemarque's recent release, Saros, and Insomniac Games' upcoming Marvel's Wolverine.
"We have many appealing first-party titles scheduled in FY 2026, including Saros, released in April, and Marvel's Wolverine, slated for release in September. We expect the contribution to earning of first-party titles to exceed FY 2025," Tao concluded.
It's worth pointing out that, yes, it's not a huge surprise that Sony is going to keep trying to make Marathon work after all the money it poured into Bungie. But if the last few years of the video game industry have proven anything, it's that nothing is guaranteed. Sony has shown it won't hesitate to cut its losses, even to the tune of hundreds of millions in development costs, if it doesn't see a path forward.
Hopefully, it doesn't come to that for Marathon, since that would also very likely mean more layoffs and upheaval at Bungie, and at worst, the end of the studio's historic and tenured run.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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