Sony has recorded a $560 million impairment charge against its Bungie acquisition in Q4 of fiscal year 2025, bringing the studio’s total write-down for the year to approximately $765 million, as reported by Kotaku. Sony’s own filing attributed the losses to “recording of impairment losses against Bungie, Inc.’s intangible and other assets (Q2: 31.5 bln yen, Q4: 88.6 bln yen, FY25 total: 120.1 bln yen)” – which is corporate-speak that covers both Marathon‘s underwhelming launch and Destiny 2‘s ongoing collapse.
Sony acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion in July 2022, a move designed to fast-track PlayStation’s live service ambitions off the back of Destiny 2‘s then-peak popularity. That bet has not paid off. Marathon, Bungie‘s extraction shooter and its first new franchise in over a decade, launched on March 5, 2026 at a $40 price point – and two months on, it’s hovering between 10,000 and 15,000 concurrent players on Steam, the platform where it reportedly shifted the bulk of its copies. It hasn’t managed to crack the top-10 most played games on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, or PC in any given week since launch. Meanwhile, Destiny 2 has hit its lowest point ever on Steam, which adds a second front to what is becoming a very expensive problem for PlayStation.
Honestly, the math here is brutal. Sony has now written down roughly $765 million on a studio it paid $3.6 billion for – and that’s before factoring in development costs that reportedly exceeded $250 million for Marathon alone, per reporting from Wccftech. There is also the spectre of Concord – another Sony live service casualty that cost the company an estimated $400 million before being shut down within two weeks of launch in 2024 – sitting in the background as a reminder that this pattern is not new. Sony’s struggles with keeping live service games alive extend beyond just Bungie, and the pressure on each studio to justify its existence is only growing.
What makes this particularly difficult to watch is the human element. Bungie has already seen multiple rounds of mass layoffs since the acquisition, its CEO Pete Parsons was pushed out, and insiders have reportedly flagged the possibility of further cuts if Marathon‘s player numbers deteriorate further. There are paths forward – a free trial weekend, a price drop, more aggressive marketing – but none of them are guaranteed, and none of them address the four years and billions of dollars that have already been spent getting here. Sony‘s full FY2025 earnings report, expected in late May 2026, will likely tell us more about where Bungie stands as a going concern within PlayStation.
Do you still have faith that Marathon can turn things around, or has this write-down effectively sealed its fate? Sound off in the comments below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more breaking gaming news and PlayStation coverage.
