Where Bungie's 'Marathon' Audience Is, And Isn't

There are a lot of options here, some better than others, some that are likely going to be completely dry wells. I thought I’d go through them.

Destiny Players – This one is sort of the heartbreaker. Despite being Bungie’s first non-Destiny game in a decade, this is probably just not for most Destiny players. The PvE side of Destiny, the vast majority of its content, has really nothing here, and no PvE content is current planned, says Bungie. Marathon is technically PvPvE, but a limited amount of AI during matches is not going to be the same thing. You will have to transfer from a looter shooter to an extraction shooter which is wildly different.

An exception here may be more dedicated Destiny PvP players, as there are obviously some certainly gameplay…similarities between the two shown off in the footage we’ve seen. It’s a new genre, yes, but I can see a good chunk of that playerbase moving over. My guess is that Destiny players will actually be the largest percentage of purchases, but I don’t think most will stick with the game long term.

But also, Bungie doesn’t want a bunch of Destiny players to leave that game. They’ve been having enough issues with dropping playercounts to want to cannibalize the base of a live game they are still trying to run for many more years to come. More people are in fact still working on Destiny than Marathon over there, by last count. So this is a factor as well.

Tarkov Players – Obviously the single biggest extraction shooter has to be mentioned here, and if Bungie is going to pull players away from anywhere, it seems likely that they would try to peel off a lot of players here.

The problem being is that Tarkov players, at this point, are going to be pretty loyal to that game, a game that has been around since 2016, a year longer than Destiny 2. It’s hard to track playercount, but if the metrics I can find are right, it’s 100K concurrent a day with a remarkably stable playerbase. So even if it’s the same genre, hard sell.

Apex Players – This might be a good place to harvest some people. Between Marathon’s classes and its gameplay, it feels the most similar to this game, outside of its Destiny elements, perhaps.

Apex still has a ton of players, 180K concurrents on Steam alone as we speak. That said, the game has been steadily dropping since a peak in January of 2023, now less than a third of that two years later, and nearing all-time lows. It feels like there is potential there, perhaps more than most other places, if it’s now on the decline.

Shooter Streamers and Their Audiences – This does include a lot of Destiny streamers, and almost all of the major ones will play during launch. I think a ton of Destiny players will try Marathon (though at a $40 asking price, it’s a bit of a commitment), but staying with it is another story.

However, I also believe that as a big new shooter launch from Bungie, we are going to see A) a huge paid campaign from Sony and Bungie, to get influencers to play it. B) Streamers and YouTubers playing it anyway simply because it will at least be the current big thing in the multiplayer market during that time. If that’s true, if it gets hyped up enough, audiences may listen to those they follow and give it a shot themselves. Of course the…opposite can be true as well, and that could spiral pretty fast.

It’s tough. It’s a tough situation for any multiplayer shooter to carve out a brand new audience in this day and age, and even those that have still need staying power (Marvel Rivals has lost half its players in three months). Marathon is no different. It can be a hit, but it’s going to be difficult.

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