Despite only releasing five days ago, Marathon has already become the center of online controversy and discourse, due to both criticism of its low player count, as well as issues with predatory monetization practices by Bungie. While Bungie engaging in less than scrupulous business practices is nothing new, the constant discussion of Steam chart player numbers is a relatively new phenomenon for the studio that made Halo and Destiny.
Marathon, the latest title and first attempt at an extraction shooter for Bungie, launched across multiple platforms on March 5th, and saw a concurrent player peak on Steam of 88,337 players. While this is a number that the majority of paid titles will likely never see in their lifetime, many have speculated that this is a lower number than Bungie had hoped for, due to the exceedingly high cost of developing AAA games.
Adding to the tension around the Steam numbers is the reality that the player counts didn't rise during the opening weekend, as most major releases are expected to do. Rather, Marathon has seemed to keep the attention of a small but loyal fanbase, with a recent 24 hour peak hitting a high of just over 66,000. This shouldn't come as a shock, due to Marathon being labeled as a "hardcore PvP title," as well as extraction shooters tending to be a more niche genre, with ARC Raiders being the obvious exception to the rule.
While many have grown tired of the back and forth regarding Steam player counts, the one question that has remained to be answered until now is how sales of the game are doing on console. In a new video from Forbe's Paul Tassi, he has confirmed what many have suspected for a while now, that Marathon is primarily being played by PC gamers, and that consoles sales are doing significantly worse than those on Steam.
In a clip shared by Bounding Into Comics, Paul says, "I will tell you right now, my Bungie sources have confirmed that this is a primarily played game on PC."
This is absolutely terrible news for Sony, as they previously spent $3.6B to acquire Bungie. It would seem that Sony overestimated the amount of gamers who would be interested in a new extraction shooter set in a franchise that was essentially dead. The game's cluttered and confusing UI and color schemes were already an issue for many people who played the Server Slam, and now it seems that Bungie will have an uphill road to increase or even maintain its current player base.