{"id":855851,"date":"2026-09-21T21:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T21:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/855851\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T21:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T21:06:10","slug":"marathon-didnt-reach-as-many-players-as-bungie-hoped-and-needs-to-evolve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/855851\/","title":{"rendered":"Marathon Didn’t Reach As Many Players As Bungie ‘Hoped’ And ‘Needs To Evolve’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Bungie gearing up for Marathon 2.0? It\u2019s hard to know. While the studio hasn\u2019t announced anything that bold, fans could be forgiven for reading into the recent teases<\/a> around its next content drop as hints for a more ambitious reimagining of the extraction shooter in the future. One thing that is clear is that Marathon isn\u2019t as popular as Bungie wanted it to be<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarathon is an important part of shaping where Bungie goes next, but it was never intended to replace Destiny,\u201d the studio wrote in a new blog post<\/a> about how Bungie is approaching the future. \u201cThe game launched to strong critical reception, and the players who embraced Marathon connected deeply with what makes it distinct. At the same time, it did not reach as many players as we had hoped, and we also know and understand that the game needs to evolve.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does evolving Marathon mean? For now, it means the end of a seasonal model and investment in a new PvE mode dropping in a December update called Symbiosis. The studio says Marathon needs to grow beyond its current extraction shooter \u201cgenre constraints\u201d to become a \u201cdeeper survival experience.\u201d That doesn\u2019t mean Marathon is ditching PvP though. It sounds more like an \u201call of the above\u201d approach. Bungie is promising \u201cmeaningful experiences whether you prefer cooperative PvE, competitive PvP, or the unpredictable tension of Marathon PvPvE.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Bungie was planning on pulling the plug on Marathon sooner rather than later, I wouldn\u2019t expect these sorts of commitments to be outlined so explicitly in a post about the studio\u2019s future. At the same time, no live-service game\u2019s runway is unlimited, and Bungie called Destiny \u201cfoundational\u201d to its future. The same was not said about Marathon.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s impossible for me to ascertain from a technical standpoint what would be feasible to add to Marathon down the line, it\u2019s certainly easy to imagine its current and future maps serving more as experiences based around PvE grinding and world building that expand the game\u2019s story rather than just the tension of multiplayer. The narrative potential in Marathon is endless. Everything about the game\u2019s look and feel has a strong identify that makes you want to keep coming back.<\/p>\n

Of course, actually turning that potential into a sustainable game loop that does in fact keep players coming back is much easier said than done. Bungie said it\u2019ll have more to share on Marathon\u2018s future in later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is Bungie gearing up for Marathon 2.0? It\u2019s hard to know. While the studio hasn\u2019t announced anything that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":855852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-855851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}