Bungie has had a rough go of it with Marathon, as the live project was expected to arrive as soon as this September, but early fan and community impressions were particularly poor, leading the Destiny creator to delay the game, indefinitely for the time being.
It has been a couple of months since the delay announcement came about, an update that even surprised the devs, and while there has been no firm information about when we can expect Marathon, Sony's Chief Financial Officer has commented on the game in a Q&A call following the unveiling of the recent financial report, which affirmed that 80 million PS5s have been sold.
After translation via an interpreter (thanks, VGC), CFO Lin Tao touched on Marathon by promising that the game will launch in this fiscal year, meaning we can expect to be playing the title before the end of March 2026.
"First, about Marathon, how we factored it in the forecast, we expect the launch to happen within the fiscal year. But, having said that, this is not a commitment. No official announcement has been given yet."
Tao continues, "We are now doing modifications in development and, based on the progress, in the autumn time frame we believe we can communicate when we can launch [Marathon], either from Bungie or PlayStation."
Tao did also use this moment to talk about Sony's grand plans for Bungie, which is to forsake its more independent nature to instead more significantly incorporate it into the PlayStation Studios family. As for how this is going, Tao adds the following.
"We have gone through structural reform, as we announced last year, so this independence is getting lighter, and Bungie is shifting into a role which is becoming more part of PlayStation Studios, and integration is proceeding. So in the long term, if you can see this as an ongoing process, the direction [for Bungie] is to become part of PlayStation Studios."
So, expect more information on Marathon to come out sooner rather than later, as Tao has faith the game will eventually launch and won't be cancelled, explaining that "we are now fixing the problems, so we believe this launch will happen. If this launch is cancelled we'd need to do the revision of the valuation, however as of now this is not expected."