Bungie's extraction shooter has been out for just over a month, and Forbes journalist Paul Tassi has published a detailed breakdown of where things stand. The picture isn't pretty. The game is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam, with 70% of the player base on PC. Average playtime on Steam sits at 28 hours, with 22% of players logging more than 50 hours and 7% surpassing 100. So far, so decent. The problem is retention. In just over a month since launch, Marathon has already shed nearly 60% of its Steam peak player count. Its all-time peak was 88,337 concurrent players — itself well below the 143,621 recorded during the free server slam event. And the cost? Way too high for that performance. Tassi confirmed the development budget exceeds $200 million — likely surpassing $250 million — and that figure doesn't even cover ongoing maintenance and post-launch content. On the sales side, Marathon moved just 1.2 million copies in its first three weeks, a respectable figure for most games, but nowhere near enough for a live-service title of this scale and price tag. Tassi's verdict is blunt: the game needs more players, needs to stop losing players, and needs to start converting its existing base into microtransaction revenue — though it's not facing imminent shutdown. 🔗 Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/04/09/checking-in-on-marathon-a-month-after-launch/