After a quiet start to the year, the blockbuster new releases are starting to ramp up.

One simple way to gauge a game’s popularity and potential is by checking out the Steam player count charts, which have shed light on the early fortunes of Marathon and fellow new release Slay the Spire 2.

And it’s fair to say that despite a healthy enough start for Marathon, Slay the Spire 2 is absolutely blowing the Bungie shooter away.

At the time of writing, Slay the Spire 2 peaked with 209k players within the first 24-hours on sale.

Marathon, on the other hand, boasts a peak player count of 87,661 following the first few hours of the servers going live. That’s below the 97k all-time peak for Highguard, although the doomed hero shooter is free-to-play. On the plus side, it’s night and day compared to Concord, which didn’t even reach 1k.

In terms of player count chart placement, Slay the Spire 2 is third for the day, while Marathon sits just outside the top-ten in eleventh.

Unsurprisingly, Counter Strike 2 and DOTA 2 top the live Steam charts, while Arc Raiders, Resident Evil Requiem, FiveM, Bongo Cat, Rainbow Six Siege, RUST and PUBG all feature in the top ten.

While Marathon may have failed to make the top-ten (at the time of writing), the early Steam reviews are pretty decent.

The survival extraction shooter has a ‘Very Positive’ rating based on nearly 2.5k user reviews.

Again, it’s not quite on par with Slay the Spire 2, which has an ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ rating based on 1.8k reviews.

If you missed the original (and you should definitely check it out), Slay the Spire is a deckbuilding roguelike.

The sequel – which is in early access for £17.99 – features a ton of new cards, relics and potions, not to mention new enemies and co-op multiplayer.