After a lukewarm response to its closed tests and the general landscape when it comes to live service games, Bungie delayed Marathon last year, pushing it into 2026. Now, Marathon has a new release date - March 5, 2026 - and PlayStation is clearly pretty confident about it as it's the first game to get its own Pulse Elite Headset.
Bungie and PlayStation revealed just about everything you could want to know about Marathon this week. Pre-orders are live, there's a collector's edition if you're into that kind of thing, and as I said, it has a release date now. A release date that was accidentally revealed a few hours early by Xbox.
Marathon Is A Big Enough Deal That It Has Its Own Range Of PS5 Accessories
Marathon's suite of matching PS5 accessories has also been revealed. As is the case with most PS5 exclusives PlayStation has faith in, Marathon has its own DualSense controller. The controller has a white base with black and acid green markings, including the Marathon logo in the middle of the touchpad.
Within Hours, Marathon Has Entered The Top 10 Best-Selling Games On Steam
Pre-orders literally just opened today.
The step beyond PlayStation has taken for Marathon that it hasn't done for its other games so far is that DualSense has a matching Pulse Elite headset. The accessory, which was part of a range of accessories revealed for PS5 two years ago, has the same Marathon paint job as the controller.
The Pulse Elite headset has only been available in standard white and midnight black until now.
Marathon's DualSense will be released on March 5, the same day as the game, but pre-orders will begin later this month on January 29. It costs $84.99, which has become the standard for official themed DualSense controllers. The headset will cost $169.99, which is slightly more expensive than the standard model, and will exclusively be available in the US.
Marathon Being The First Game To Get A Pulse Elite Headset Makes Sense
Although PlayStation has passed up on the chance to give other games their own themed headsets, it makes more sense for Marathon to have one as opposed to games like Ghost of Yotei or Astro Bot. Marathon will be a game that's played exclusively online with other people, so communication through something like a headset will be key.
There have been other PlayStation-published games where that was the case since the Pulse Elite headset was revealed - Helldivers 2, and Concord, both of which had their own DualSense controllers (yes, there was an official Concord DualSense). However, the timeframe might be the key here. The white headset was available for a year before the black version was introduced, and now we're into year three, it seems PlayStation is finally ready to start giving appropriate games their own headsets too.
