Marathon's system requirements look to continue one of 2025's best PC trends: great performance and low min specs

Image from Bungie's Marathon reboot. Not for use until after 12 April 2025, 11 PDT. — (Image credit: Bungie)

The Marathon info continues to come thick-and-fast: the last few days saw the release date of March 5 accidentally revealed by an Xbox store listing, quickly confirmed by Sony, followed by Bungie revealing the game's stacked voice cast, featuring talent from pretty much every big game of the last decade.

Now an update to the extraction shooter's Steam listing has added its minimum and recommended specs, and Bungie is continuing in the vein of one of last year's most welcome trends: low system requirements, and (presumably) big performance.

Minimum system requirements

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10 64-bit (latest Service Pack)
Processor: Intel Core i5-6600 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4 GB) / AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (4 GB) / Intel Arc A580 (8 GB, with ReBAR on)
DirectX: Version 12
Network: Broadband Internet connection

Recommended system requirements

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10 64-bit (latest Service Pack)
Processor: Intel Core i5-10400 / AMD Ryzen 5 3500
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2060 (6 GB) / AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (8 GB) / Intel Arc A770 (16 GB, with ReBAR on)
DirectX: Version 12
Network: Broadband Internet connection

What instantly jumps out at me is the similarity to Arc Raiders' minimum specs, though in some areas Marathon is even less demanding. The Intel Core i5 6600K CPU is a quad-core 3.9 GHz chip launched a decade ago (and was also the minimum requirement for Arc). The GTX 1050 Ti also launched ten years ago and even at the time was a budget-friendly card (also the Arc minimum requirement). And Marathon demands even less RAM (8GB) than Arc's minimum requirement (12GB).

Even when you're looking at the recommended specs, there's nothing there that I would consider especially high-end: the GTX 2060 is what our hardware team would politely refer to as a "mid-range option", while the i5-10400 processor is six years old by now.

This is unquestionably a good thing: as December 2025's Steam hardware survey shows, there are an awful lot of PC gamers out there still rocking older setups, and why not. There's also a wider context for this. As PCG hardware expert Andy Edser recently pointed out, PC gaming has a pricing problem right now, and the memory crisis is compounding things to the point of unaffordability.

The one thing that could upset the apple cart here is if Marathon releases in a bad way. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that my experience with Bungie's games, generally speaking, is that they look and play beautifully: whatever else can be said of Marathon, I'd expect the same.

Pre-Order Trailer | Marathon - YouTube

Watch On

And there's plenty more to say about Marathon, of course. That release date came with a new cinematic trailer, a mix of environments and gameplay designed to show off the sci-fi world the studio's crafted. It's part of an effort to change the mood music around the shooter, which took a dive after last year's gameplay reveal and led to the game being delayed.

In hindsight that may have been the best thing for Marathon. Arc Raiders was a breakout hit at around the same time Marathon was initially scheduled to release, and one of the reasons for its success is how it tweaked elements of the extraction shooter formula. I suspect Bungie's made a very close study of what Embark's achieved and, looking at those specs especially, in some cases copied their homework.

Marathon still has it all to do, but the mood around it is no longer funereal… in fact, I'd go so far as to say I'm cautiously optimistic. We'll all know soon enough: Marathon releases March 5, and you can preorder it on Steam for $40/£35/€40.

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Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

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