Bungie will hold a closed alpha playtest for its upcoming live-service extraction shooter Marathon from April 23 to May 4.
Bungie has revealed the minimum system requirements for PC players looking to try out Marathon later this month. Judging by the required specs, it appears PC users won’t need to break the bank upgrading their rigs to play Marathon’s closed alpha playtest.
Originally announced to much fanfare and intrigue during the 2023 PlayStation Showcase, Marathon marks Bungie’s return to its long-dormant first-person shooter franchise from the 1990s. While the original Marathon trilogy was a story-driven single-player experience, the modern revival is a live-service extraction shooter. Bungie recently held a gameplay showcase for Marathon, where it pulled the curtain back on the game’s various design philosophies, classes, features, and even a September 23 release date.
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Additionally, Bungie announced a closed alpha playtest for Marathon, set to be held for select North American and Canadian applicants from April 23 to May 4. For those fortunate enough to be selected for the closed alpha, Bungie has released the minimum PC requirements for Marathon, and from the looks of it, the alpha build has been optimized rather well. Running Marathon‘s closed alpha will require an Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti, AMD RX 5500 XT, or Intel Arc A580 GPU, which are essentially entry-level graphics cards by today’s standards.
Marathon PC Closed Alpha Playtest Minimum System Requirements
| Minimum Specs | |
| Operating system | Windows 10 or later |
| CPU | Intel Core i5 6600AMD Ryzen 5 2600 |
| GPU | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB)AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (4GB)Intel Arc A580 (8GB) |
| Storage | N/A |
| RAM | 8GB |
| DirectX version | DirectX 12 with Feature Level 12_1 support |
On the CPU side, an Intel Core i5-6600 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 will suffice, and even RAM requirements are set at a modest 8GB. Interestingly, the download size for Marathon‘s closed alpha build hasn’t been revealed yet, leaving players unsure about what kind of storage, and how much of it, they’ll need. Given that newer PC games have increasingly begun to demand SSDs at the minimum, Marathon may very well be the same. More detailed PC system requirements, including recommended and ultra settings, are anticipated to drop after Marathon‘s closed alpha playtest period concludes.
While these minimum specs are impressively low for a modern live-service shooter, especially one as style-driven as Marathon, it’s worth noting that they only apply to the game’s closed alpha build. Bungie has made it clear that the PC specs are subject to change before Marathon‘s full launch in September, so the final system requirements and optimization may look a lot different. For now, though, Bungie appears to be casting as wide a net as possible to ensure that a broad spectrum of players can access the Marathon closed alpha and provide valuable feedback.
