A month has passed since the release of Marathon, and we’re already hearing bits and pieces about Bungie’s latest game.
In March, Bungie released a new game for the first time in years, which is actually a reboot of an old series. Marathon, a rescue-mission shooter for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC, brings Bungie’s first sci-fi world to today’s gaming landscape. According to Paul Tassi of Forbes, Bungie spared no expense in developing Marathon. Looking back at the first month since Marathon’s release, Tassi adds to a list of various metrics related to the game that he can confirm Marathon’s budget exceeds $200 million. It’s likely more than $250 million. This does not include the ongoing costs of maintenance and new content.
That’s a lot of money, but it’s not even the most surprising figure: In 2023, the production of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 cost approximately $300 million. Last month, Jason Schreier of Bloomberg noted that most AAA game budgets exceed $300 million, with a large portion going toward developer salaries. Activision spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year on the annual Call of Duty titles. However, unless Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 causes an unprecedented slump in the series, the difference between Call of Duty and Marathon is that Call of Duty will undoubtedly return next year.
With new and well-known developers releasing live-service games with high development costs only to shut them down a year, a month, or even two weeks after launch, it’s hard to say whether any shooters not yet among the industry’s biggest titles will survive. This cloud has been hanging over Marathon for a long time, alongside the discourse about Steam’s concurrent player count and the alleged sales figures, which claim over 1.2 million copies sold. While it has been successful in that it would not otherwise have sold one million copies, is that enough to cover the game’s budget?
If not, can we expect further layoffs at Bungie? If Marathon fails to meet Sony and Bungie’s sales expectations, will Sony shut down Bungie in the near future, as it has with other studios? The situation isn’t helped by the fact that Destiny 2 was already in a bad spot even before Marathon‘s release. After seeing Bluepoint Games shut down, it seems like no studio is safe.
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