We are very close to living in a world where, instead of diamonds, or gold necklaces, or calf leather handbags, people purchase each other the newest $70 or $80 multiplayer title as romantic consolation gifts. Bungie, which will soon release the promising new extraction shooter Marathon, isn’t helping by being so secretive about the game’s as-of-yet undisclosed price tag.
“Marathon will be a premium title,” Bungie writes in a Twitter post. “Marathon will not be a ‘full-priced’ title.”
The admission is as murky as a puddle. While Bungie’s use of “premium” here refers to what we recognize in our Marathon hands-on preview to be the PvP game’s stunning, intergalactic style and oiled-up, smooth controls, I’m a little paranoid that it also means Marathon will be $8 million.
Or, really, more like $50 or so. A “full-priced title,” as Bungie says, could now refer to anything from the new, industry-standard $70 price tag, to Nintendo’s more ambitious $80 cost for Mario Kart World, or its downright hubristic $90 Switch 2 copy of Breath of the Wild.
In the realm of paid extraction shooters like Marathon, the fire is tempered a bit as red-hot Helldivers 2 costs $40 and Hunt: Showdown 1896 costs $30 – though many other popular titles like Delta Force are free-to-play, as Marathon skeptics have noted.
“Not being free to play will hurt it big time,” quips a popular reply to Bungie’s post on Twitter.
“If it wasn’t bad news you’d announce it now,” says another. Marathon will launch September 23 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, so it’s only a matter of time before we find out.
Marathon feels like a good extraction shooter, but it’s not free-to-play, and I hope Sony and Bungie don’t price it into an early grave.
