Just days after PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst admitted that playtester response to Marathon has been "varied," Bungie has announced a delay, and says a new release date will be shared in the fall.
"Through every comment and real-time conversation on social media and Discord, your voice has been strong and clear," Bungie wrote in today's announcement. "We've taken this to heart, and we know we need more time to craft Marathon into the game that truly reflects your passion. After much discussion within our Dev team, we’ve made the decision to delay the September 23rd release.
"The Alpha test created an opportunity for us to calibrate and focus the game on what will make it uniquely compelling—survival under pressure, mystery and lore around every corner, raid-like endgame challenges, and Bungie’s genre-defining FPS combat. We're using this time to empower the team to create the intense, high-stakes experience that a title like Marathon is built around. This means deepening the relationship between the developers and the game’s most important voices: our players."
Closed testing will continue, with an "immediate focus" on an array of topics from improving encounters, rewards, and combat to better graphics, "a darker tone," improved gameplay for singles and duos, and the addition of proximity chat—notably, something Bungie said just two months ago that it purposely excluded because of the way it enables toxic behavior.
All told, it sounds like the studio's focus for improvements will be on, well, pretty much everything—not a great state for what's meant to be Bungie's next big thing, especially when it's this deep into development. The fact that Bungie can't even provide a new release target at this point—and won't be able to for at least a few more months—is even more worrying.
Bungie said it will share an update on its progress this fall, along with a new release date, which could wind up sometime in 2026. A "Game and Network Services" document released last week pegged Marathon for release in Sony's 2025 fiscal year, but that doesn't actually end until March 31, 2026.
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