Ever since Sony acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion back in 2022, it has seen a rather turbulent era for the famed game development studio. We got sight of Bungie struggling under Sony’s watch back in November, where Sony mentioned it was disappointed in sales and growth metrics. Sony saw hope with revised figures in February for gaming, raising its expectations. However, Sony had to specifically note Bungie’s performance in its full-year FY2025 statement, with Bungie weighing down its otherwise very strongly performing gaming division.
Sony records massive Bungie write-down
During the Sony earnings call, there’s specific mention of Bungie’s asset impairments amounting to ¥120.1 billion across FY2025. For those checking live conversion rates, that’s around $766 million USD in total impairments for the fiscal year.
Note that impairments are not the same as direct revenue figures. It’s sort of an overall summary of value interpretation. In simple terms, when Sony bought Bungie, they recorded various assets on their balance sheet. Things like Bungie’s game IP, technology, studios, and brand value. An impairment means Sony is now saying, “these assets we valued at $X are actually worth less than we thought, so we need to write down their value.” This isn’t cash leaving Sony’s bank account, but rather Sony admitting they overvalued what they bought or that Bungie isn’t performing as expected. Which is quite damning really, considering Bungie’s reputation and quality.
The ¥120.1 billion figure includes both the November ¥31.5 billion impairment (related to Destiny 2 underperformance) and an additional ¥88.6 billion in Q4 FY2025. Notably, Sony’s February 2026 forecast did not include these Q4 Bungie impairments.
“When you look at the factors causing the change from our February forecast for operating income, you can see that we recorded approximately 190 billion JPY in items not included in our previous forecast, including impairment losses on assets at Bungie.”
Says CFO Lin Tao
This suggests Marathon’s actual performance post-launch fell significantly short of Sony’s expectations just months earlier. That’s in addition to the major update for Destiny 2, which got significantly pushed back until June, too, after the launch of Renegades back in December. So both major titles under Bungie’s banner have fallen short since the last quarterly reports.
It’s hard to interpret just how much money Sony made back from Marathon. But, with a sizable downgrade in asset valuation, you can imagine it not performing to ARC Raiders levels, and Destiny 2 still coasting along in murky water means Bungie is not in the best of positions.
Not all doom and gloom for Marathon
However, it’s not all entirely doom and gloom, as Sony mentions Marathon has shown some positive signs.
“In our studio business, earnings from Bungie’s title portfolio did not reach our expectations, so we downwardly revised our business plan and impaired the full amount of the fixed assets related to Bungie except for goodwill. Player reception to Marathon is strong, with the game receiving a Metacritic score of 82 and more than 90% of the player reviews on Steam being positive. Engagement metrics such as retention also remain at a high level,”
said Lin Tao, CFO, Corporate Executive Officer, Sony Group Corporation.
In the eyes of Sony, there are certainly pathways to salvage Marathon. Player numbers remain a massive concern for many players tracking on SteamDB, with it being one of the most viewed games on the analytics platform, still two months on.
But you’ve got to anticipate that it’s late season in an extraction shooter that has mandatory wipes. It’s not unusual. Chances are it won’t spike as it did on launch come Season 2, but further dev refinement for its seasons, as planned, could capture new players and returning players, who may also purchase more battle passes and other MTX. It’s certainly an uphill battle, but by the sounds of things, Sony is not entirely displeased with Marathon’s potential going forward. Yet, it obviously needs some help if it wants to make its reported $200 million USD investment back. It has sold around 1.2 million copies as of its first month, so chances are it can continue selling more copies, amongst other MTX too.
In other news, Sony’s gaming platform performed exceedingly well overall. There’s concern the full financial year could be problematic with AI costs, hardware constraints, fluctuating currency values, and ongoing geopolitical tensions. But that’s a problem for another day.
Authored by
Craig Robinson
Craig Robinson is an experienced gaming and esports writer with nearly a decade of coverage experience since 2015. With a background in software engineering, he combines his journalistic expertise with a strong understanding of technical SEO and web development fundamentals. He’s passionate about covering MMO games, competitive esports, and crafting guides that help players get the most out of their favorite titles.
He's been writing about gaming and esports for over 10 years, which started as for fun project during university. He has since developed his skill set, contributing to newsrooms coverage of key games and event, and blending evergreen content strategy and a solid grasp of content marketing fundamentals. His work has appeared in Esports News UK, Gamer Guides, theEscpaist, and VideoGamer, and he now contributes to Gamehub's review team. When he’s not writing, Craig can usually be found running, at the gym, or tinkering with coding projects to keep his GitHub active.
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