Sony says Marathon will still release by March 2026, pinky promise, and 'as needed, we will make corrections'

Sony has announced that Bungie's upcoming extraction shooter Marathon, which was initially slated for release this year before a negatively received beta saw it delayed, will still release by March 2026.

Brilliantly, Sony announced this in the same financial report that saw it basically throw its hands up and tell investors, yeah, that Bungie acquisition didn't really work out. There are many more reasons for that than Marathon, of course: Destiny 2 is in a big slump, while the studio has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs, and its CEO recently departed.

Screenshot from Bungie's Marathon reboot. Do not use before 4/12/25, 11 PDT. — (Image credit: Bungie)

The currently running playtests are focused on the game's quality and ability to retain players. "We are in the process of analysing the performance against those [Key Performance Indicators]," said Tao, "and as needed, we will make corrections."

Whether those corrections can alter Marathon's trajectory… well, that remains to be seen. Bungie recently announced another closed playtest for the game, and it's certainly not a bad shooter, but you worry about how this thing's going to land. It certainly doesn't help that Arc Raiders has just become everyone's favourite extraction shooter and, when Embark was looking at the reception to Marathon, realised it had yinned where Bungie yanged.

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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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