Bungie has revealed that Marathon won’t be a ‘full-priced’ title.
Unfortunately, they haven’t actually shared the price of the game quite yet. But they did commit to a time frame for when the price will be revealed.
The official Marathon Twitter account shared this message:
“Marathon will be a premium title. Marathon will not be a ‘full-priced’ title.
We’ll announce details this Summer.”
There are two big and well known factors that can be clearly seen will inform the decisions related to Marathon’s pricing. What is first in everyone’s minds, of course, are the tariffs that is complicating what is an already difficult period in the video game industry.
As the US government chose not to exempt video games from tariffs, Nintendo is expected be hit with a 145 % tariff for their upcoming Switch 2 console. Subsequently, Sony already announced price increases for the PlayStation 5 in the EMEA region. Even if the US is not part of the EMEA, this should clearly indicate that US tariffs will have a carry-over effect on the entire industry, around the world.
But the other factor is the fact that Marathon is the next release in Sony’s grand experiment with live service games. Sony literally see-sawed in this endeavor in 2024, with one of the biggest hits of the year in Helldivers 2, to be followed with one of the industry’s most infamous flops in Concord. Both games were priced at $ 40, but the reactions to them could not have been any more different. The different reactions they received can also be argued to have reflected certain facts about the live service market today.
In the case of Concord, it was a hero shooter in a market that was already saturated in hero shooters. Its presentation and aesthetic had AAA production values, but proved severely divisive. But the consensus seemed to be that gamers did not see the value in paying for a hero shooter where its competitors where free to play.
Helldivers 2 was argued to have been the exception that proved the rule. The live shooter market isn’t saturated, so long as you’re introducing a new sub-genre that proves its mass appeal. Sony would partly undo some of Helldivers 2’s success, but that isn’t relevant to this discussion. As an extraction shooter, Marathon could have a more similar situation to Concord than it is to Helldivers 2. But we can already say, from the early positive buzz coming out of closed beta tests last year that it won’t be perceived as out of touch like Concord was.
After Activision shut down Call of Duty’s DMZ extraction shooter mode, it seemed that few other game studios could match Escape from Tarkov’s success in the field. For that matter, it doesn’t look like the extraction shooter could become bigger than it already is, under the auspices of one of the giant AAA game companies. Marathon is Bungie’s and Sony’s big attempt to pull off what Activision couldn’t, and at least for now, it looks like they could pull it off.
It all hinges on Bungie’s decision making, but given how Sony has made changes in the studio, it may actually be Sony’s choice ultimately. Regardless of whoever is responsible, Marathon’s price could make the difference between Bungie regaining or losing its luster completely.
