It’s a troublesome time for Bungie and Future 2, with mother or father firm Sony saying the studio has failed to fulfill its gross sales and consumer engagement expectations.
In its newest monetary report, Sony mentioned it had recorded a 31.5 billion yen (approx. $204.2 million) impairment cost on account of Future 2’s underperformance. That was important sufficient to tug down income at Sony’s Sport & Community Companies Section, which incorporates Sony Interactive Leisure.
Sony chief monetary officer (CFO) Lin Tao, expanded on the problems with Bungie in an investor associated monetary name:
“Relating to Future 2, partially as a result of adjustments within the aggressive surroundings, the extent of gross sales and consumer engagement haven’t reached the expectations we had on the time of the acquisition of Bungie. Whereas we’ll proceed to make enhancements, we downwardly revised the enterprise projection in the intervening time, and recorded an impairment loss in opposition to a portion of the belongings at Bungie.”
It’s definitely been a troublesome time for Future 2 and Bungie, which is engaged on the delayed extraction shooter Marathon for a launch in 2026.
In August, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons left the corporate after 23 years and almost 10 as CEO. He was succeeded by Justin Truman, beforehand chief improvement officer and fellow Bungie veteran. Parsons oversaw Bungie throughout many turbulent years, first taking on as CEO in 2016 from Harold Ryan and overseeing its break from Activision in 2019. He was on the helm all through most of the occasions catalogued in our 2021 expose of Bungie’s inside work tradition. Simply months after our report, Bungie was acquired by Sony for $3.7 billion, ending the studio’s flirtation with independence.
Sony, clearly, noticed one thing in Bungie and its upcoming slate. However because the acquisition settled in, considerations started to come up in regards to the studio’s future. Future 2 was struggling, and Marathon was nonetheless years away. Then the layoffs got here. In 2023, Bungie laid off roughly 100 people and delayed Future 2’s The Ultimate Form DLC, with Parsons taking accountability for the cuts. Builders informed IGN on the time that the environment at Bungie was “soul-crushing” as fears grew of a complete Sony takeover of the corporate. In 2024, this was adopted up with much more layoffs, impacting 220 folks regardless of The Ultimate Form’s success. 155 folks had been additionally built-in from Bungie into Sony right now. Within the wake of these layoffs, former employees claimed Bungie misrepresented its funds and had considerably overextended itself when Sony acquired the studio. It was apparently unhealthy sufficient that no less than one supply described as a “well-connected former employee” went as far as to say that Bungie confronted dire penalties if the acquisition hadn’t occurred, saying that the “alternate historical past is insolvency.”
Troubles continued to rock the studio by the remainder of 2024 and into 2025, with Marathon seeing a delay out of September of this yr to an unknown future date. Most not too long ago, Sony confirmed Bungie could be built-in into PlayStation Studios so the corporate might have extra management over the developer.
Future 2 has seen its participant rely plummet as updates have did not hit the mark. The motion shooter hit a brand new low on Steam this month, with a peak concurrent participant rely of 13,497 up to now 24 hours. In June final yr it hit 314,000. Latest consumer evaluations for Future 2 on Steam are ‘principally detrimental,’ though total evaluations are ‘principally constructive.’ Steam doesn’t paint the whole image in relation to Future 2’s reputation, with it broadly out there throughout a number of platforms, however clearly Sony isn’t proud of how the studio has carried out within the three years because it introduced it into the fold.
Again in June, Sony mentioned it remained dedicated to reside service video video games regardless of high-profile failures equivalent to Harmony, and insisted Marathon could be out earlier than April 2026 regardless of the combined alpha suggestions and damaging accusations of plagiarism in opposition to Bungie.
Sony might be eager to keep away from one other catastrophic launch like Harmony, which was pulled offline simply two weeks after launch, with one estimate suggesting it bought simply 25,000 copies. It has proved a pricey failure for Sony, with tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} wasted amid the closure of its developer, Firewalk Studios. Bungie now faces concern over its personal future, with the strain on Marathon to ship.
Picture by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP through Getty Photos.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You possibly can attain Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].