There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding Marathon over the past month. Aside from the recent art theft that was acknowledged by Bungie, fans have also been lukewarm with the game’s playable Alpha. Despite all this, Sony has confirmed that the game will continue with its FY25 release, potentially leading to a 2026 release.
Sony’s Herman Hulst (via Forbes) framed the recent online discussion surrounding the upcoming extraction shooter as “strong early engagement.” While Hulst isn’t wrong about the engagement being “strong,” it’s not for the reasons he thinks. Beyond that, this is also where a slide revealed the game’s FY25 release window.
Although PlayStation hasn’t officially canceled the previously announced September release date for Marathon, it seems all but certain after this presentation. Due to how wide FY25 can be, there’s a chance that this shooter either hits its September 23 release date. There’s also the possibility that this game is delayed all the way to March 2026, in order to remove all of the plagiarism.
Fans are currently down on the shooter, even if there are fans legitimately interested in this game. While it has a good art style, fans are now worried about potential plagiarism after the recent scandal. There’s also the fact that this is $40, as most multiplayer titles like Marvel Rivals are opting for being free-to-play with microtransactions.
There’s also just a general fatigue around live-service games that a title like Marathon can’t beat. Many players rolled their eyes when Sony committed to several live-service games, as players knew this was being done to make money. Furthermore, PlayStation already released a huge failure in Concord, which should have rang alarms for the company.
Herman Hulst claims that Sony has learned from the failures of Concord, but we’ll see about that. At the moment, it just seems like the publisher is in love with a dated idea that fans aren’t particularly passionate about, not anymore at least.
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