After a month, Bungie’s latest title, Marathon, hasn’t exactly made the splash Sony and Bungie wanted,” according to an analyst. Sales are estimated to be around 1.2 million, which amounts to gross revenues of around $55 million across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Despite a strong launch, the concurrent player count has dropped significantly. Now, a new report alleges that the game’s budget is over $200 million and talks about why the game won’t face an immediate shutdown like Concord. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by IGN (@igndotcom)

Forbes reports that the budget is allegedly nore than $250 million. This allegedly doesn’t include ongoing costs for the live service game, nor the development of post-launch support.

The game’s dominant platform is on PC. On Steam, the peak concurrent player count reached a count of 88,337 at launch. That number has fallen since, with the latest 24-hour peak hitting 25,392 players. Marathon is also out on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S but Sony and Microsoft don’t make player numbers public. PC is estimated to be 70% of Marathon’s sales.

Last year, a report revealed that Bungie failed to meet its sales expectations which many beliveiled would not bode well for Marathon.

However, Forbes reports that Bungie developers are hard at work on new content, and theere is no danger of an imminent shutdown.

Despite this, many in the video game community are wondering how things can change considering how hardcore Marathon is compared to the mainstream appeal and success Arc Raiders had last year.

While Bungie has had that despite the game’s steep learning curve, over time, recovering will get easier. That being said, the game’s recently launched raid-like experience, Crypto Archive has doubled down on the hardcore experience, with severral requirements that need to bet met before a player can access it.

Popular streamer and former professional Counter-Strike player Shroud believes that the game is too difficult for casual players.

“Cryo Archive is insane. It’s the most elaborate extraction shooter map I’ve ever seen in a game ever,” Shroud said. “The loop that they made is truly something special. The problem is, is it too elaborate? Is it too complex? Is it too much of a grind? Is your 9-5 grandma and grandpa going to be able to do it? I don’t know.”

We’ll have to wait and see what kind of impact Marathon’s new content could make on the game.