Sony released their financial results today, and it's not looking good for one of its more recent acquisitions.
In 2022, the company acquired Bungie for an impressive $3.6 billion. That's nowhere near the staggering amounts Microsoft paid for Bethesda or Activision Blizzard King, but it's still a significant amount of money.
Four years, a couple of Destiny 2 expansions, and one new game later, Sony announced a $560 million impairment cost for the fourth quarter of their 2025 fiscal year. For what it's worth, that quarter ended roughly a month after Marathon launched. This is in addition to a $201 million impairment loss in Q2 2025.
First things first, you might be asking, "What is an impairment cost?" Let's talk economics quickly.
An impairment loss is an expense that happens when an asset's carrying value, in this case, Bungie, exceeds a recoverable amount. Essentially, Sony is saying that Bungie has lost over half a billion dollars in Q4 2025 that they can realistically recover, due to poor performance. They also called out a downward projection while mentioning their impairment loss during their corporate earnings and strategy presentation. Mind you, this wasn't for strictly PlayStation earnings and strategy, but all of Sony.
All of Bungie Has Underperformed Since Sony's Acquisition
To be fair, you can't pin the losses solely on Marathon. Is it underperforming in the genre? Sure, but you also have to consider that the extraction shooter genre is arguably pretty niche to begin with.
Everyone loves to point to ARC Raiders and its sustained success, but that's the exception, not the norm. There's also the fact that ARC Raiders has found a dedicated audience due to being a PvE game with PvP elements. Marathon is the opposite, catering to the more hardcore crowd and having its PvP elements front and center. As such, the casual crowd was never going to stay invested long-term.
There's also the fact that in the world of shooters, Battle Royales are still massively popular, and the hero shooter genre is seeing a resurgence with Marvel Rivals and the Overwatch updates.
The biggest reason, though, is the fact that Marathon isn't the only game in Bungie's active portfolio. Destiny 2 fans continue to "enjoy" their love/hate relationship with the game. Even though Marathon is a new punching bag for some, I doubt that Sony paid over $3.5 billion just for a hardcore extraction shooter.
There's definite value in both Bungie as a studio and the Destiny brand, but neither is living up to their potential. That's also not accounting for the several roundsof lay-offs Bungie has undergone since being acquired by Sony, as well as the departure of former CEO Pete Parsons in 2025. As a result, Sony isn't getting the return on their investment they were hoping for.
