Steam, Not PS5, Leads Marathon's Early Sales
A Sony-owned studio shipping most of its copies on Steam? That’s the story around Bungie’s Marathon, which may have sold roughly 1.2 million units worldwide with PC carrying the load, according to new analyst estimates.
Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, estimates in a new Substack post that Marathon has crossed about 1.2 million sales and generated around $55 million in revenue so far, excluding microtransactions. By platform, Alinea pegs sales at approximately 800,000 on Steam, 217,000 on PlayStation 5, and 133,000 on Xbox Series X/S. That puts close to 70 percent of the player base on PC, about 19 percent on PS5, and roughly 11 percent on Xbox.
It’s a striking split for a game developed by Bungie, now a first-party Sony studio. Reports in March suggested Sony would scale back PC releases for its single-player titles, while keeping multiplayer projects on PC. Marathon’s early audience skew makes a clear case for why those multiplayer exceptions matter.
Retention Paints a Healthier Picture
Sales tell only part of the story. Elliott also estimates Marathon is holding a healthy 380,000 daily active users, a sign that the players who stayed are sticking with it. Average playtime is another bright spot on PC, with Steam users logging around 27.8 hours, compared to 16.5 hours on PS5 and 17.3 hours on Xbox, per Alinea’s data. The game’s loop appears to be landing best on PC, where extraction shooters tend to thrive.
Getting players to that loop might be the harder part. Elliott suggests Marathon’s first impression isn’t as approachable as its closest competition, pointing to Arc Raiders’ popular Server Slam as a catalyst for surge growth. Marathon’s own Server Slam, by comparison, didn’t translate into the same momentum at launch. The read: plenty of people tried it early, fewer converted for the long term.