Although this decision is likely a net positive for Marathon and has pleased both the game’s haters and its fans – who seemed to agree, though for different reasons, that the title shouldn’t stick to its original release date – Bungie wouldn’t be Bungie if this announcement came without its own controversy.
According to Forbes’ Paul Tassi, most of Bungie’s developers were informed about Marathon’s delay at the same time and in the same way as the gaming community – through the official announcement – and were not warned beforehand.
If true, which it might as well not be, given that Paul’s sources are anonymous and cannot be confirmed, this would not only highlight once again the rift between Bungie’s devs and corpos, but also call into question the fixes they plan to implement, making the list attached above seem less like a structured development roadmap and more like a rushed list of demands developers weren’t prepared for and will now have to scramble to meet – making it more likely that Marathon will launch in 2026 at the earliest.
That, combined with earlier reports that Bungie “absolutely cannot afford” for Marathon to fail and the May 2026 release of GTA VI – meaning it’s unwise to launch anything else around that time – calls the entire exercise into question and is sure to raise doubts about whether it would actually be smarter for both Bungie and Sony to cancel Marathon altogether, rather than trying to ship a game whose reputation some agree is already beyond fixing.
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