Sony’s big Bungie bet is looking a lot heavier on the books right now.
According to Sony’s latest earnings report, the company recorded around $765 million in impairment losses connected to Bungie for the 2025 financial year, which ended in March 2026. In yen, that figure is listed as 120.1 billion yen against Bungie’s “intangible and other assets.”
That is a serious number, especially when you remember Sony paid $3.6 billion to acquire Bungie back in 2022. At the time, the logic was clear: Bungie had deep live-service experience through Destiny 2, and Sony wanted more expertise in that space. Fast forward a few years, and the returns are looking much messier.
GamesRadar notes that earlier reporting already pointed to around $204 million in Bungie-related asset costs during Sony’s second quarter, including assets tied to Destiny 2. By the final quarter, things had stacked up further, with Sony recording roughly 88.6 billion yen, or about $565 million, in impairment losses linked to Bungie.
The timing is extra painful because Bungie finally launched Marathon in March. This was a big moment for the studio: its first new FPS in almost a decade, and its first non-Destiny release in 12 years. Coming from the original Halo studio, expectations were naturally high.
But Marathon does not seem to have become the breakout hit Sony probably wanted. The extraction shooter built some buzz through server slam events, but GamesRadar reports that it moved an estimated 1.2 million copies in its first month. That is not a disaster in isolation, but for a project carrying Bungie’s name and Sony’s multi-billion-dollar acquisition expectations, it is not exactly “everyone in Discord is screaming about it” territory either.
For Malaysian and SEA players, this is interesting because Marathon sits in a very competitive live-service market. Over here, players already split time between shooters, MOBAs, gacha games, and whatever their squad is currently grinding after work or class. If a game asks for premium money, long-term commitment, and a steep learning curve, it needs to hook people fast.
Marathon’s problem, based on the current reaction, is that it may be too demanding for a broad audience. GamesRadar compares it broadly with Arc Raiders, but points out that Marathon is more punishing. The PvE curve is tougher, the interface is less straightforward, and the lore asks for more attention. Even its first raid, Cryo Archive, was considered difficult enough that Bungie later made it easier in an update.
That matters in SEA. A lot of players here are willing to sweat, no question, but they are also practical. If the onboarding is rough, the UI feels confusing, and your friends bounce after week one, the game loses momentum fast. Live-service games do not just need good mechanics; they need a social reason to stay.
Still, Sony’s gaming division is not suddenly collapsing. The report says sales across the games business were “essentially flat,” with software helping balance lower hardware sales. Sony is also projecting broadly flat operating income for FY26 because it is increasing investment into its next-generation platform. Strip those investments out, and Sony says its current business should continue growing at a double-digit rate.
So this is not a PlayStation panic button moment. But it is definitely a warning sign for Bungie. Destiny 2 is no longer enough to carry the whole conversation, and Marathon needs to prove it can grow beyond a hardcore niche.
Bungie, for its part, still sounds committed. The studio has said it knows where it wants to take Marathon’s story over the next few years. Now the real test is whether enough players stick around to see that plan through.
Source: GamesRadar