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[Hollywood Hitman]

Considering the dev who retweeted things like we need to use violence on ice officers, I have lost all goodwill towards Marathon. Bungie should not accept that so fuck them.

Wow I missed that one, what was the tweet? And that's the shit I been talking about lately their behavior alone is off-putting... Condoning or even pushing got an inkling of violence is disgusting in any shape or form, especially towards the ones that put their life on the line daily for us

 

[Loomy]

while the cost of development might be comparable to BF6 (maybe less).

BF6 was built by 4 AAA studios - one of them larger than Bungie

 

[Mortisfacio]

Slay the Spires opening trend

vs Marathons

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

Slay the Spire 2 has slain the latest GAAS trash.

I guess it has slayed the Marathon's spire

 

[NastyPasty]

Europe will go to sleep in 3h.

Yeah, I'll be tucked up for sleepy bobos at 10pm.

 

[Shubh_C63]

BF6 sold 6m across all the platforms or something reaching peak around 800k on Steam. Marathon costs less - not a full price game - while the cost of development might be comparable to BF6 (maybe less). And it also needs to maintain CCU due to being an online game. I think being around 100k for weeks should not be a flop.

I think people are just enjoying predicting the launch peak number. Eventually this will go down with comparable numbers with PAYDAY2, I think.

People need to see the 4th map too. Bungie goes unexpectedly hard some times.

 

[Novaex]

Some AI generated estimates:

My educated guess for Bungie's Marathon (released March 5, 2026):
Development costs: $250–350 million
Marketing costs: $75–125 million

Estimated break-even: 12–18 million copies sold across all platforms (PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam PC).
Formula: Copies = Total Costs / (Price × Net %)
E.g., Mid: 400,000,000 / (40 × 0.70) = 14.3M. Transparent: Multiply costs by 1 / net margin (1/0.7 ≈1.43x gross needed)
Reality Check: Live-service MTX (Destiny-style) could halve this (e.g., 7–9M copies + $10–20 ARPU MTX

 

[yurinka]

Let's see if it is going to be highguard or not.

It won't

Some AI generated estimates:

My educated guess for Bungie's Marathon (released March 5, 2026):
Development costs: $250–350 million
Marketing costs: $75–125 million

Estimated break-even: 12–18 million copies sold across all platforms (PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam PC).
Formula: Copies = Total Costs / (Price × Net %)
E.g., Mid: 400,000,000 / (40 × 0.70) = 14.3M. Transparent: Multiply costs by 1 / net margin (1/0.7 ≈1.43x gross needed)
Reality Check: Live-service MTX (Destiny-style) could halve this (e.g., 7–9M copies + $10–20 ARPU MTX

It's a GaaS, very likely will generate more revenue from addons (battlepasses and mtx) than with full game purchases.

The development cost of that estimate I think it's too high. I'd say it may be around $250 for launch+season 1 dev+marketing, postlaunch content and servers. Let's say $300M to make a conservative estimate.

And let's say on average after in addition to the $40 removing stuff like store cuts, taxes, refunds, chargebacks, transaction fees etc. and adding addons (non-standard editions, passes, mtx...) after a year ends making an average of let's say $80/user to get a conservative estimate (may GaaS make more revenue from addons than from game sales).

around $300M / around $80 = around 3.75M units needed for break even, with season 2 and later getting self funded with its own revenue. Let's say 4M

 

[MatrixReloaded101]

Got to wait until at least Monday to see …. But it's looking like Slay the Spire 2 is the clear winner for now.

 

[Danteyke223]

Eeeeeh it is a bit odd cause i cant buy Slay The Spire 2. I think steam is having issues

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

Got to wait until at least Monday to see …. But it's looking like Slay the Spire 2 is the clear winner for now.

Man that game is going off, bout to hit 120k lol

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

127.9k

 

[Novaex]

It won't


It's a GaaS, very likely will generate more revenue from addons (battlepasses and mtx) than with full game purchases

Sure, thats why I posted the mtx estimate, which would decrease the sell estimates by a lot(from 14 mil to 7-9).
The issue is that the game won't get anywhere close to 7-9 million. Financially it will be a bomb. The only question is how much money it will loose.

 

[Saber]

Some AI generated estimates:

My educated guess for Bungie's Marathon (released March 5, 2026):
Development costs: $250–350 million
Marketing costs: $75–125 million

Estimated break-even: 12–18 million copies sold across all platforms (PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam PC).
Formula: Copies = Total Costs / (Price × Net %)
E.g., Mid: 400,000,000 / (40 × 0.70) = 14.3M. Transparent: Multiply costs by 1 / net margin (1/0.7 ≈1.43x gross needed)
Reality Check: Live-service MTX (Destiny-style) could halve this (e.g., 7–9M copies + $10–20 ARPU MTX

I got the feeling they went hard on the marketing side, probably because the initial reception was not good.

 

[Kacho]

Marathon is really struggling while Slay the Spire 2 sees hefty bumps

 

[Mengy]

Got to wait until at least Monday to see …. But it's looking like Slay the Spire 2 is the clear winner for now.

Slay the Spire 2 is a much more casual friendly game with a much larger audience than Marathon (a hardcore PvP game). It's not too surprising to see Spire outperform Marathon, though I did expect Marathon to climb faster than it is.

 

[FoxMcChief]

I'll take the Marathon numbers more seriously once people have used up their "free trial" on Steam.

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

Just wild to me 135k already, that game for being a smaller type of title is cookin pretty hard it's jumping 7 to 10 every update

 

[kpopSuperstar]

To get ahead of trolling or celebration, what is the overall consensus for what concurrent number Marathon needs to be so it's not a bomba?

For a big new multiplayer game we can look at the previous numbers of similar paid genre games.

Note, we need to see the numbers over the weekend, games like this can grow on Friday and Saturday. Don't make assumptions based on the first few hours.

Massive success = 300K to 500K (Helldivers 2/Arc Raiders type of success)
Really good success = 200K to 300K
Moderate = 100K to 200K (The kind of numbers Helldivers 2 get when they release expansions.)
Bad = Under 100K
Concord = Under 1K

Marathon has special circumstances, with the hate and controversies, so over 150K over the weekend would probably be pretty good considering.

Marathon needs to retain over 100K players in the first month, maybe more, to be healthy. Come April 1st, it should not be under 100K.

This is based on my own personal bullshit, so don't take it too serious. But this is what I assume.

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

I find it hilarious that in the Marathon thread people are talking about Slay the Spire 2 more noww Slay the Marathon

 

[Loomy]

Just wild to me 135k already, that game for being a smaller type of title is cookin pretty hard it's jumping 7 to 10 every update

First game sold almost 2 million copies.

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

First game sold almost 2 million copies.

I'll have to check that game out then, was one that slipped by me

 

[Saber]

I find it hilarious that in the Marathon thread people are talking about Slay the Spire 2 more noww Slay the Marathon

I honestly didn't even knew about this game. It might be impopular on my country.
Is it any good?

 

[SEGAvangelist]

I find it hilarious that in the Marathon thread people are talking about Slay the Spire 2 more noww Slay the Marathon

Slay the Spire is so good.

 

[Dyno98]

I'll take the Marathon numbers more seriously once people have used up their "free trial" on Steam.

I don't think people refund games all that much in Steam. I've only even used it once, thought I'm also not the type of player to pay full price at launch.

 

[Loomy]

This is based on my own personal bullshit, so don't take it too serious. But this is what I assume.

Appreciate this disclaimer lmao.

I'll have to check that game out then, was one that slipped by me

Good game. Steep learning curve, but there's never a jump. Everything feels gradual.

 

[Frugal]

Yeah i don't even think this game will touch Destiny 2 expansion CCUs. The final shape (Which un. underperformed according to bungie) had over 300k. Dire.

 

[SmokSmog]

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

Appreciate this disclaimer lmao.


Good game. Steep learning curve, but there's never a jump. Everything feels gradual.

It looks really cool I actually remember seeing it drop but I was still glued hard to Destiny, go figure lol. But yea looks cool from what I see gonna Def pick it up eventually

 

[kpopSuperstar]

Wow I missed that one, what was the tweet? And that's the shit I been talking about lately their behavior alone is off-putting... Condoning or even pushing got an inkling of violence is disgusting in any shape or form, especially towards the ones that put their life on the line daily for us

These are the people making Marathon.

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

These are the people making Marathon.

Wow that's unreal that they even jobs still, terrible

 

[Spyxos]

I must say i didnt expect such high numbers.

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

I bet you already have the Fairgame$ version ready to go.

 

[Loomy]

Yeah i don't even think this game will touch Destiny 2 expansion CCUs. The final shape (Which un. underperformed according to bungie) had over 300k. Dire.

I don't know if I would compare the culmination of a 10 year old story to the release of a new game in a still mostly niche genre. There's a reason after the 300k+ CCU for The Final Shape, it dropped to the point it's barely getting 20k a day now. Most Destiny players just wanted to get TFS so they could get closure and then move on.

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

I honestly didn't even knew about this game. It might be impopular on my country.
Is it any good?

I think the first one was good. Don't know about the second one.

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

A card deck game in early access is doing all this . . .

 

[schaft0620]

Europe will go to sleep in 3h.

What the fuck is a kilometer

 

[Bondo]

I said 250k with poor retention. Steep learning curve.
I think that number will be hit.

 

[SmokSmog]

Numbers officially declined for the first time, two hours after launch.

What the fuck is a kilometer

 

[dottme]

Those CCU thread are my favorite now. Success or not.
I'm really interested to see this weekend numbers.

 

[Sgt.Asher]

Shame we can't view pokopia's ccu.

 

[BigBeauford]

Opening to less than 1/4 of Arc Raider's opening CCU, and having less than half of Arc Raider's current CCU is a disaster yall. It will touch 100k this weekend, but there is no chance the mood is rosy at Bungie.

 

[Fbh]

It's so close to joining Veilguard at the peak of the steam charts!!!

 

[Xyphie]

Prediction: More people will play CSGO (i.e. not CS2) by Sunday this weekend.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

It couldn't even reach 100k

 

[SHAKEZ]

Slay the spire 2 really decided to end Bungie's whole career.

 

[Cumulus]

considering what`s riding on this and how long this has been in development at a giant studio like bungie this isn`t a good first impression...at all.

Three point six billions!

 

[PeteBull]

These are the people making Marathon.

Fuck, this guy is most mellow beta cuck u can think of, he wouldnt recognise actual german nazist even if he was shot dead by one, i mean he is fricken office worker behind keyboard, why even play pretend of being any kind of tuff and talking about punching ppl/chosing violence

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

86.7 and the numbers are dropping.. I mean I'm sure it'll splooge a little more but wow I would absolutely pay a fee to listen in on bungie right now

 

[dottme]

Ok, now I'm convinced Marathon is actually published by the Slay the Spire 2 marketing team.