Bungie May Transform ‘Marathon’ Entirely This Year, According To Its New Roadmap

InnovationGamingBungie May Transform ‘Marathon’ Entirely This Year, According To Its New RoadmapByPaul Tassi,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet.Follow AuthorMay 16, 2026, 10:42am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.MarathonBungieSony recently backed Marathon during its earnings call, even as it reported that it has amassed $765 million in impairment losses against Bungie. That, however, still means Sony values Bungie as an almost $3 billion asset, meaning they are sticking with the studio for a while, at least. Here’s what Sony said about Marathon and its goals going forward:“Player reception to Marathon is strong, receiving a Metacritic score of 82 and more than 90% of the player reviews on Steam being positive. Engagement metrics such as retention also remain at a high level. Going forward, we aim to improve the performance of the game by working to retain highly engaged core users through the introduction of additional content, further improvements in the gameplay experience, and expansion of the user base."The key bit of that is “expansion of the user base” as there are simply not enough people playing Marathon, and overall retention has been poor (the retention Sony refers to is hardcore players putting in a lot of hours). MarathonBungieBut what’s happening is likely going beyond recent experiments like sponsored kit modes aimed at more casual “we don’t want to risk gear” players, as Bungie recently said in a lengthy blog post. And the way it’s going to evolve over the course of the next year seems like it’s going to be significant enough where at least potentially, it may expand the game past a single genre if pure, high-level extraction isn’t working out well enough. Among the highlights:MORE FOR YOUSeason 2 will get a PvP-lite mode that leans mo...