Sony is not happy with the performance of destiny 2The company confirmed this in its latest Q2 earnings announcement. “About this destiny 2“Partially due to changes in the competitive environment, the level of sales and user engagement has not reached our expectations at the time of the acquisition of Bungie, Inc.,” said Tao Lin, Sony’s chief financial officer. In response, the company is recording an impairment of approximately $204 million on the developer’s intangible assets.
Loss does not equate to loss of money, but is a representation of destiny 2 The sales and engagement model created when Sony acquired Bungie could not be fulfilled. The value of “intangible assets” that Bungie brought into the deal, such as the Destiny IP and the developer’s existing customer relationships, are currently lower than expected. However, this does not extend to the “goodwill” that was created when the two companies agreed to the acquisition, Sony says, because it is “supported by the entire game segment.”
When it completed its acquisition of Bungie for $3.6 billion in 2022, Sony believed the developer could use its expertise in running online games to help expand PlayStation’s live service offerings. While the strategy has yielded successes, e.g. hell diver 2Which has proven to be a popular multiplayer game on PC, PlayStation And Xbox, it has also produced catastrophic failures like harmonyWhich was removed from digital stores less than two weeks after its launch.
Sony’s announcement doesn’t suggest that the company believes it was wrong to buy Bungie, but it does put even more pressure on the developer to perform, and justifies Sony taking stronger control over what happens at the studio. RenegadesA planned Star Wars-themed expansion could bring the mass appeal Bungie is hoping for, but the developer also has another game to contend with.
Bungie delayed taking on an extraction shooter, marathonIn June, after it was revealed that stolen assets were used in a significant portion of the game. The developer has not announced a new release date since then, but has shown interest in destiny 2 Never fully returns, Bungie’s next game could cover a lot.