We know a lot more about Bungie's Marathon reboot now than we did a week ago. We learned that it's a hero-based extraction shooter with abilities, economy, and a handful of maps in the vein of Escape From Tarkov. We know it's got weapon mods that should tickle the brains of Destiny buildcrafters, and Bungie also shared details on proximity chat, solo play, and cosmetics (it'll have them).
Weirdly, one important topic the studio was cagey about is how much it'll cost. Pricing was not part of Bungie's big Marathon reveal stream, nor has it been mentioned in official blog posts. It took press interviews to reel an answer out of Bungie, but its vague responses are already causing confusion. In a reply on X correcting a comment from a Bungie dev, the official Marathon account said it will be a "premium" title, but it will "not be a ‘full-priced’ title."
Not especially helpful. If you're a normal person who doesn't speak marketing, "premium title" just means it'll cost money. Presumably by "full-priced title," it means Marathon won't cost $70 (or does that mean $80 now?), but I'm not breathing a sigh of relief yet. Will Marathon be $60? $50? $40? $30? I suspect the reactions to each would be very different.
Here's why I think Bungie hasn't revealed Marathon's price: it doesn't know yet. Like so many details of Marathon's design—including solo play, social spaces, and even the studio's position on proximity chat—price is all part of an ongoing "conversation," a word that came up around a hundred times in a recent DrLupo interview with assistant game director Del Chafe.
"I can't go into details, but what I'll say is: We're not ready to talk about it right now, but you've been out to the studio. You'll be out to the studio again. We'll have conversations about this, we'll be able to share," Chafe said. "You and a bunch of other people are going to have really good feedback about it, so it's definitely going to be a conversation."
Game director Joe Ziegler seemed similarly undecided in an interview with the Friends Per Second podcast.
"Obviously everyone's got their own definition of what's the right price. As we deliver that information, we're hoping we hit the right price that makes you feel it's worth your value."
Maybe I'm reading too much into a standard "more on this later" comment, but that's not how I'd be talking about my pricing strategy if I had it all figured out. What we're seeing is the gamedev equivalent of a Price Is Right contestant waving their hand over each price tag and picking the one that gets the loudest reaction.
Not to suggest that's the wrong move here: Bungie and Sony are right to be nervous about price. Selling a multiplayer shooter for anything more than free already runs the risk of getting on folks' bad side before Marathon is even out. It's a tricky needle to thread—sometimes subtracting $5 or $10 on a price tag is the difference between your game being widely perceived as a great value or hard to recommend until a sale comes along.
Obviously, Sony has big expectations for Marathon's financials, but in this extraction shooter player's opinion, this is a moment where it's better to be a humble Helldivers 2 ($40) than a presumptuous Call of Duty ($70).
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