Marathon's struggles lead Sony to take $560 million loss on Bungie

The story

Sony's acquisition of Bungie isn't paying off. As Marathon struggles and Destiny 2 flails, the PlayStation company reveals big losses on Bungie.

From the source

Sony's $3.6 billion buyout of Bungie is not going well for the PlayStation maker. As reported in Sony's latest earnings , Bungie's owner recorded an 88.6 billion yen ($565 million) impairment loss against the developer behind Marathon and Destiny 2 . That whopping figure is included in Sony's fourth quarter earnings, which ended on March 31, or about four weeks after Marathon launched .

For the full year, Sony marked a 120.1 billion yen ($768 million) impairment loss against Bungie.

"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," Sony CFO and corporate executive officer Lin Tao said in comments. According to Investopedia , an impairment refers to "an unexpected and permanent drop in a fixed or intangible asset's value to a market value that's less than what's recorded on a company's balance sheet. The amount is recorded as a loss on the income statement." In other words, Bungie's value is much less than what Sony paid for it.

Who and what

Key names and topics in this story: Marathon, Sony, Bungie.

Where to follow next

• Read the full piece at www.polygon.com
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