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.

Housemarque Studio head said that Saros cost similar to develop as Alan Wake II(this is notable as it’s the most expensive entertainment product ever made in Finland). Alan Wake II had a development cost of €50m and marketing cost of €20m. So Saros’ strict development cost is likely slightly lower than €50m and its marketing is unknown.

It should also be noted that Sony don’t close down many studios for making games that don’t sell very often. Almost always it is studios that are struggling to get products developed. Japan studio is famous for making lots of games that didn’t sell well but the point they got closed down was when their output dropped to almost nothing and one of the Santa Monica Execs was sent their to manage the studio and get them all working on a big project, but the game just didn’t get anywhere.

Based on the leaked info that showed DriveCLub was close to 5 million in sales, we also know that it's net revenue was just over $24 for each unit sold. That is basically what Until Dawn did. And it most assuredly cost a lot more to make too.

Drive Club was a 71 on Metacritic and that studio was on a downward trend. There's some evidence to suggest that Sony value critical reception highly. One of the big issues for Days Gone was that it reviewed poorly.

Driveclub released for the PS4 1 year after GT6 released for the PS3 as an exclusive even as PS4 was already out.

Once Gran Turismo Sport was out for the PS4 it was likely Sony didn't want another driving game of them to divide attention to.

GT Sport launched with a focus on online and lacking content in singleplayer, but it eventually was updated enough to become a meaty game (I know it, have over 200 hours on it while I didn't play it online pretty much at all), so they decided to let it shine alone over there.

I don't see why Sony would have 2 racing games, to me it was clear as they knew GT6 being a PS3 exclusive it would be ok to have another game on PS4 as it would be a while for GT to be there, but once GT was doing good there then it really doesn't make much sense to keep both.

I think its a combination of many things including portfolio diversity and team expertise. I'm not a racing genre fan so this opinion may sound reductive but Sony did not need Drive Club when they had GT. At least I think that was a major part of their thinking. All the meanwhile the kind of arcade racing Evolution did previously was not in trend/popularity at the time. 

It's such a shame because suddenly Forza comes along and shows that having an epic environment focused/open road racing game does in fact have huge potential. Again I'm not a racing fan but the only 2 recent games that peaked my interest were the first Motostorm and then Forza Horizon 5. I think Motostorm could of had an incredible reboot on PS4 if they grounded it a bit more, the direction they went for 2 and 3 was maybe a bit too arcade-y.

Ultimately I think Sony shuts down established teams when they stop seeing potential in them to making a "hit" relative to their size. Also why I think Japan studios was shut down. They never had an issue making new IPs in the past, they were just all unssuccessful (