Sony has reported a $765 million impairment loss due to underperformance of Marathon developer Bungie during its last financial year.
The PlayStation owner bought Bungie, the original creator of Halo, in early 2022 in a deal valued at $3.6 billion. However, the studio has struggled financially since then, with Destiny 2 failing to do the business and its new game, Marathon, having a hard time breaking out. As a result, Sony has admitted the acquisition has yet to pay off, resulting in these impairment charges.
During the financial year ending March 31, 2026, Sony’s Game & Network Services Segment, of which PlayStation is a part, suffered a 120.1 billion yen (approx. $765 million) impairment loss against Bungie’s assets. Sony had already reported a 31.5 billion yen (approx. $204.2 million) impairment charge as a result of Destiny 2’s underperformance during the second quarter of its fiscal year, but it’s now reported another 88.6 billion yen (approx. $565 million) impairment charge during the fourth quarter.
Hardcore extraction shooter Marathon launched early March, within the last fiscal year and, crucially, within the quarter in which Sony reported the additional 88.6 billion yen impairment charge against Bungie. Marathon reportedly had a budget of more than $250 million, and, according to analysts, has failed to meet sales expectations.
Bungie has repeatedly said that while Marathon has a steep learning curve, over time, recovering from a bad loss gets easier. But then Marathon’s recently launched raid-like experience, Cryo Archive, doubled down on the ultra hardcore experience, with several requirements you needed to meet in order to access it.
Former professional Counter-Strike player, Shroud, has said that while Cryo Archive offers an incredible experience, it’s too difficult for casual players. Speaking in a recent stream, the influential gamer said: “Cryo Archive is insane. It’s the most elaborate extraction shooter map I’ve ever seen in a game ever. The loop that they made is truly something special. The problem is, is it too elaborate? Is it too complex? Is it too much of a grind? Is your 9-5 grandma and grandpa going to be able to do it? I don’t know.”
Where does Bungie go from here? Marathon is far from a Concord-style live service disaster, but it’s clear Bungie needs to do something to increase sales. Simply making Marathon easier may not be enough to do the trick, and would run the risk of alienating those who currently love it the way it is. Making it free-to-play this soon after launch would just anger those who paid full price. Could a single-player or PvE campaign spark renewed interest? Could a traditional PvP mode help?
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During an investor-focused Q&A, Sony chief financial officer Lin Tao indicated the company will stick with Marathon in a bid to grow its user base. “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,” Tao said.
“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. Going forward, we aim to improve the performance of the game by working to retain highly engaged core users through the introduction of additional content, further improvements in the gameplay experience and expansion of the user base.”
While Bungie has dragged down Sony’s financial performance for the year, sales for the Game & Network Services Segment were “essentially flat” and operating income was up 12%. Looking ahead, Sony expects its current financial year to end up with flat operating income, due to “the incorporation of an increase in investments for the next-generation platform.” It sounds very much like Sony is working hard on PlayStation 6.
“We plan to base our PS5 hardware sales in FY26 on the volume of memory we can procure at reasonable prices and we expect hardware profitability to be essentially the same as FY25,” Sony said.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
