It hasn’t been a good year for Bungie. The end of Destiny 2‘s Light and Dark saga was met with declining players following lesser support for the live service as Bungie put its focus on Marathon. The extraction shooter was their first new game in years, and yet it too underperformed following its launch back in March.
Both games have been the target of heavy criticism from fans and broader gaming enthusiasts alike, but now Bungie is taking a hit from their owner: Sony themselves. Speaking in their latest financial results, Sony share a “recording of impairment losses against Bungie, Inc.’s
intangible and other assets.” What this means in ‘business speak’ is that Sony is reducing the expected value of Bungie and revising expectations following the poor performance of Destiny 2 and now Marathon.
More specifically, Sony record a $766 million (¥120 billion) impairment loss for the whole last financial year. Back in July 2022, Sony purchased the Destiny makers for $3.6 billion, which they have since confirmed “have not reached the expectations we had at the time of acquisition.”
The latest impairment losses against Bungie only further show Sony’s tricky situation they bought themselves into. Marathon was the first new game released during Bungie’s time with Sony, and it’s underperforming considerably. The Steam player count never cracked 90,000 concurrent players, and has only declined over time to a meager average of 15,000.
It’s a glaring red flag that Sony never even shared any sales numbers or milestones for Marathon, instead remaining silent and now only reporting the impairment losses. Whilst Marathon still plans for years of new content to support its player base, it’s clear that Bungie also need to find new players and re-engage their past players to satisfy Sony’s expectations.
We’ll be reporting on all things Bungie and PlayStation in the future, so be sure to check back often to GameObserver for all the latest as it happens!
