Here's my problem with the "emergency acquisition" narrative: every single person in a position to know the financials had tens of millions of reasons to push it. Marty said on Act Man he made out well when Sony bought his stock. Barrett's lawsuit says he was owed ~$45-50M from the deal. The bigger the crisis story, the easier the sale. Maybe it's true! But nobody outside leadership has ever shown the actual numbers, and "trust me, we were dying" from people who got rich off the deal isn't evidence.
Bungie was below the red line before the Sony acquisition. If it wasn’t acquired right then, the studio was very close to shutting its doors at the very least on Destiny. It was an emergency acquisition