It's been a lengthy three-year wait for Marathon after Bungie first announced it in 2023, and the road to launch has been rocky, rife with controversies and negative optics after the poor reception to last year's alpha testing. After a delay and a major overhaul with reworked gameplay, visuals, and additional features, though, the extraction shooter has made a huge comeback — and its full release is imminent.
The long-awaited multiplayer FPS reboot of Bungie's classic franchise is now just hours away from its release across Xbox Series X|S, Steam PC, and PS5, and hype leading into the game's launch is sky-high.
A huge driver of that excitement was the free-to-play Marathon Server Slam that ran this past weekend, giving thousands of players the opportunity to try the shooter a few days ahead of its release date while helping Bungie test its servers. Aside from a few pain points like the complexity of the UI, feedback from Server Slam players was almost universally positive.
It's no exaggeration to say that Marathon is the talk of the town right now — so much so that it's currently in the #2 position on Steam's Top Sellers chart, behind only Resident Evil Requiem and above big names like direct competitor ARC Raiders and the highly anticipated Crimson Desert action RPG.
With preorders flying off digital shelves, there are undoubtedly countless fans curious to know when exactly they can jump into Marathon and start embarking on runs to Tau Ceti IV. If you're one of them, look no further; below, you'll find everything you need to know about Marathon's release date, launch times, and more.
Time zone |
Launch time |
|---|---|
PDT |
Mar. 5, 10 a.m. |
EDT |
Mar. 5, 1 p.m. |
BRT |
Mar. 5, 3 p.m. |
GMT |
Mar. 5, 6 p.m. |
CET |
Mar. 5, 7 p.m. |
KST |
Mar. 6, 3 a.m. |
JST |
Mar. 6, 3 a.m. |
AEDT |
Mar. 6, 5 a.m. |
The above graphic (shared by Bungie itself) as well as the table beneath it show the official release dates and launch times for the game. Specifically, Marathon is coming out on March 5 at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET, with the developers releasing it at the same time globally across Xbox, Windows PC, and PS5.
That means depending on the region you live in and the time zone you have, it could be coming out as early as the morning of March 5 or as late as the middle of the night on March 6. Note that if you don't see your time zone above, you can use tools like this time zone converter to figure out when Marathon unlocks in your area.
Another thing worth highlighting is that if you've preordered Marathon, you can preload it ahead of its launch so you can start playing the game as soon as it releases. Preloads are available now across Xbox, PC, and PS5; the FPS' file size is quite small at just 23-25GB, so it shouldn't take long for most players to download and install.
If you haven't preordered yet but want to so you can preload Marathon, you still can. It's available for $39.99 on all of its platforms, though notably, you can get the PC version for just $33.89 at Loaded thanks to a nice deal.
Will you be playing Marathon?
Now that Marathon is just hours away from its full release, I have to ask: will you be playing it yourself? I wasn't expecting to like it very much myself since I don't play many PvP games, but I had a ton of fun playing Marathon with my friends during the Server Slam, and I'm looking forward to doing so again. Let me know how you're feeling about the game in the comments.
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