1) 650k in sales would be a failure for a game reported to cost north of 200-250 million from a studio Sony bought for 3.6 billion.
(650,000 x $40) x 0.8 = $20,800,000 revenue (The 0.8 assumes a 20% steam cut).
Not sure how you get "strong" from those numbers, this is not an indie game.
2) Again at a scale of 200-250 million dollars, 5-15k is a pathetic CCU base. If Bungie keeps 30 devs on for updates that'll cost minimum about ~4.5 million a year in labor. From what I've seen DAU counts seem like 6-7x the CCU peak and it's been reported steam is 70% of the player base.
150,000 average dev salary x 30 = 4.5 million dollars.
(15,000 steam CCU / 0.7) * 1 = ~21,428 CCU across all platforms.
21,428 * 7 = ~149,996 DAU estimated across all platforms.
4,500,000 / 150,000 = $30 per user annual revenue target to keep minimum development going ( $37.5 in revenue per user when factoring in 20% platform cut for steam, $42.85 for each user when factoring in a 30% platform cut for xbox. ).
So Bungie needs to sell every single user an average of about ~$40 of DLC annually to even come close to breaking even. Those 30 devs would need to both update the core game (Maps, weapons, etc) and make DLC (Skins, etc) to break even. This is napkin math that is highly favoured toward Bungie, the real cost is likely much higher to staff 30 devs with tools, workspace, equipment, servers, etc. Let's not forget the game isn't stable yet either, it's still bleeding about 15-20% of it's user pool weekly. A smaller studio might be able to swing this player pool, but for Bungie this is a nightmare, their burn rate is incredibly high.
3) Console sales were about 30% of total sales. This game flopped incredibly hard on consoles.
4) Marathon sold 1.2 million at launch. Total sales are probably around 2 million or so at this point. At $40 a pop that would be 80 million at best, but then counting the steam and xbox cuts you're looking at maybe ~66,400,000.
Steam (70% of players, 80% of revenue) - (80,000,000 x 0.7) x 0.8 = $44,800,000
PS5 (20% of players, 100% of revenue) - (80,000,000 x 0.2) = $16,000,000
Xbox (10% of players, 70% of revenue) - (80,000,000 x 0.1) x 0.7 = $5,600,000
Overall $66,400,000
That's against a $200-250 million investment up front... This game made maybe 25-33% of it's money back. Sony has to decide if there's a profitable future or decide if they should just cut their losses now. Destiny has also under performed massivlely and Bungie is an extremely expensive studio with no evidence of recent success.
5) User reviews are dropping as people walk away. It went from like 87% or so at launch to 80% recent now on steam. Also it's 2 months after launch, the game has a reputation now. Reviews don't matter that much at this point. If all those postive reviews mattered wouldn't the game have done better than this?
6) Time will tell but I disagree Marathon is like other games. It's self destructive like Trials was in Destiny. The top players eat the bottom players and the bottom players will walk away if they're cut out of reward structure. How are you supposed to engage with an extraction shooter and gear up if you're getting blown out nearly every game?
Source for 70% steam player base, 1.2 million launch sales, and 200-250 million dev cost:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/04/09/checking-in-on-marathon-a-month-after-launch/
