Founded in 1991, Bungie are a Washington-based studio with a unique history. They were part of PS Studios' main rival, Microsoft Studios, for most of the 2000s and created Xbox's flagship IP, Halo. Then in the 2010s, they worked with Activision on the Destiny IP, releasing 2 titles and many expansions until 2019. Coincidentally, Activision was then the company Microsoft announced its intention to acquire in 2022.
2022 was also an important year for Bungie, as that was when Sony acquired them. Yet, Bungie's uniqueness continued, as they're the only first-party studio not under PS Studios. Instead, they're an independent Sony subsidiary. Bungie are also the only first-party developer who can ship their games to all competing platforms such as Xbox, even at launch.
Why does Bungie have more freedom than all other PS Studios? Desperation. Sony saw the money live services like Destiny were making, but had no in-house knowledge to create their own. To get Bungie to sell, Sony overpaid at $3.6 billion and accepted very Bungie-friendly terms in order to get them to advise on Sony's other live-service titles, while raking in revenue from Destiny 2.
Unfortunately for Sony, what transpired immediately after has been a far cry from their expectations, to the point where the Bungie acquisition is easily the biggest blunder throughout all of PS Studios in the PS5 era.
Bungie continued to release D2 expansions after being acquired, including 2024's critically acclaimed The Final Shape that excellently ended the main narrative. However, starting with 2023's Lightfall, all yearly expansions sold well below expectations. By 2026, Sony had enough and announced D2's final major content update, then laid off most of the team.
Bungie also launched a second live-service called Marathon in 2026. This PvP extraction FPS also received critical acclaim despite pre-launch issues such as a stolen art scandal. However, it too has severely underperformed, to the point where it has roughly 10% of D2's Steam player base, months after its final update. While Bungie are experimenting with more player-friendly PvE modes, this hasn't turned around Marathon's fortunes.
With 2 live services not making enough money to justify Bungie's $3.6 billion acquisition, Sony are taking action to recoup what they can. This includes halving Bungie's headcount via rounds of layoffs and taking hundreds of millions in impairment losses. Sony are also forcing Bungie's integration into PS Studios to exert more control by taking board seats and spinning out Bungie's 1 promising game into their own studio called teamLFG under PS Studios.
Bungie were meant to help Sony flourish in the live-service market. Instead, Sony are helping Bungie simply survive, which isn't even assured as they have no title in active development. This indictment alone makes Bungie the biggest failure of the PS5 era, including the 9 PS Studios closed. The combined losses of those 9, even factoring in the hundreds of millions lost on Firewalk, aren't close to the billions Sony burned on Bungie.
Genre: Live-Service FPS
Release Date: December 8, 2020
Days Since Their Last Game: 1190
Metacritic Score: 85
Genre: Live-Service Extraction FPS
Release Date: March 5, 2026
Days Since Their Last Game: 1914
Metacritic Score: 82