Sony Speaks on Bungie Acquisition Disaster, Takes an ‘Impairment Loss’

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Sony’s $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie, the company behind Destiny 2, hasn’t gone well, and Sony is now largely aware of that fact. It’s been a disappointing investment so far.

Sony acquired a studio hoping to expand into ongoing, live-service games, but has since cancelled several multiplayer projects, with Helldivers 2 being their only recent success. Meanwhile, Destiny 2, after finishing its main story with the release of The Final Shape, is struggling – it’s losing players and overall enthusiasm for the game is at an all-time low.

Due to recent issues, Sony has reduced the value of some of its assets related to Bungie.

So, I was listening to Sony’s latest earnings call – you know, the one where they talk about how much money they made – and the CFO, Lin Tao, dropped something interesting during the Q&A. He was answering questions, and this is what he said…

Okay, so with Destiny 2, things haven’t gone exactly as planned since Bungie joined us. The competitive scene shifted, and honestly, the game hasn’t been selling or keeping players engaged as much as we’d hoped. We’re still working on making it better, but we’ve had to adjust our forecasts for the future. That means we’ve had to write down the value of some of the things we acquired with Bungie – basically, we’re being realistic about where things stand right now.

As a big fan, I was pretty shocked to hear that Bungie is now officially part of PlayStation Studios. It used to be that they had a lot of independence, which was great, but things have been tough with the recent layoffs. Now it sounds like Sony is really taking the reins and bringing them fully into the PlayStation family. On top of that, I’m also worried about their new game, Marathon. It’s already facing some drama with people claiming parts of it were copied from other work, which is a real bummer.

Lin Tao also highlighted the success of Helldivers 2. Released on Xbox in August, the game is performing very well, bringing in new players on Xbox and boosting engagement among existing players on PlayStation 5 and PC. This has led to a substantial year-over-year increase in sales.

MLB The Show 25 is doing well, and Ghost of Yotei has been a big success, selling 3.3 million copies since it launched – performing similarly to its previous game. Tao stated they plan to build on this momentum by improving their studio and expanding their game franchises through ongoing learning and development.

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2025-11-11 14:07