Saros budget was less than $80 million. If the game can sell just 1.2 million copies (ironically, what Marathon has sold so far) they'll already turn a profit. Returnal sold less than 2 million copies but that game released very early in the PS5's life. Hopefully Saros will have the benefit of releasing nearly 6 years in and not being  as difficult as Returnal was.

Saros’ budget in no way needs 5m sales to recoup. 

Is the $80 million budget confirmed? And does it include marketing?

For a studio that makes one game every 4 or 5 years, I very much doubt current Sony would be happy with it selling anything less than 5 million copies...

Driveclub had the trajectory of a 5 million+ seller, that didn't stop Sony from closing Evolution Studios which were apparently half the size of Housemarque. And the Sony of that time was lenient compared to the current one. Saros isn't 100% guaranteed to review or sell better than Returnal either. I think this game is the studio's last chance but I'd love to be proven wrong. "0% chance" of them getting closed sounds a tad optimistic lol.

My argument to that would be that Sony has shown realistic expectations towards Housemarque in the past. 

Returnal sold around 500k copies when they decided to acquire Housemarque and while there's no specifics about Returnal budget expecting an increase of 10x when SAROS is basically a spiritual successor seems unrealistic even for Sony. 

There's also other factors like how SAROS won't have a collectors edition nor a special edition controller and Sony even decided to not have physical copies of the game in PlayStation Direct, the lower the expenses the lower the expectations. Yotei and Astro had special products for example, even an only digital game like Marathon had a controller.

So yes of course Sony has expectations and budget alone they have to be expecting more from SAROS than Returnal but millions over millions in the first 3 months that's usually what Sony reports before leaving us in the dark? Unlikely. 

In the case of NIXXES the difference between them and BP or DO is that NIXXES has released work constantly, 3 games in 2024, 3 games in 2025, DS2 for pc just released, they are also working on SAROS and I would be surprised if they aren't working in something else already. 

In the case of HAVEN, Bend, LFG and even MM yeah they are in trouble. I hope MM gets a pass because the last time they made a new IP it took them 7 years lol. 

MM is also one of the most creative studios that exists. Their work is really one of a kind.

Sadly it usually lack sales potential, so current Sony should not be too happy with them, but closing them would be even worse than Bluepoint Games, IMO, they just won't be replaced by anyone else.