Following a plagiarism scandal and an indefinite delay earlier this year, Bungie’s corporate overlords Sony have reiterated again that extraction shooter Marathon is still aiming to release by March next year. Meanwhile, Destiny 2’s struggles have seen the parent corp flatly admit that game’s not doing as well as Sony imagined when they bought Bungie.
During an earnings call as part of the company’s latest financial results, Sony CFO Lin Tao responded to a question about Marathon by declaring that they are “fully dedicated to launching the title as scheduled”. That schedule being by the end of this financial year, which concludes at the end of March 2026. Tao’s words aren’t that surprising, given they’ve been the company line throughout this year.
However, back in August, Tao did mention that Bungie hoped to be able to stick a fresh release date on the game at some point this autumn. We’re by no means out of that window yet and things could change any day now, but as of writing no new date’s been forthcoming and winter beckons. To be fair, Tao revealed that Bungie are still “in the process of analysing Marathon’s performance in terms of gameplay and retention during October’s technical test, with tweaks to be made “as needed”.
Things being pretty quiet on the Marathon front isn’t unusual at this point, but questions’ll only intensify if it keeps inching closer to March without that new date.
Meanwhile, these financial results revealed that Sony’s accountants have had to record an impairment charge which indicates that Bungie’s current value is about 31.5 billion yen (about £155 million/$204 million) less than the number the corp would like it to be. That underperformance relative to what was envisioned by Sony when they bought the studio is being dumped firmly at Destiny 2’s door, with Tao saying that “partially due to the changes in the competitive environment, the level of sales and user engagement have not reached the expectations we had”. As a result, profits have been cut into and corporate frowny faces abound, though Tao did declare that the companies “will continue to make improvements”. Hopefully that doesn’t just mean more layoffs.
Here’s also hoping Marathon can avoid a Concord-esque fate whenever it fully breaks cover.
