According to Activision, Destiny has managed ship $500 million worth of units on day one of launch. This makes it the biggest launch for a brand new video games franchinse in history. Note the word franchise.
“Based on extraordinary audience demand, retail and first party orders worldwide have exceeded $500 million for Destiny,” said Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard. “This industry milestone marks another blockbuster success for our company and demonstrates our unique ability to create some of the most successful entertainment franchises in the world. The success of Destiny, along with the recent introduction of Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone, is further validation of our unique capabilities to create great entertainment franchises from the ground up.”
The key word there is ‘franchise’. The Activision press release is rife with it. Because Activision doesn’t necessarily launch games, it launches franchises. That mentality has always served them well. With Destiny they may well have birthed their next golden goose.
“Since the beginning, we’ve been confident that our investment and belief in Destiny would pay off. But not many people believed we’d be able to say it did so on day one,” said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. “Destiny is officially the biggest new franchise launch in our industry’s history. It’s also the highest-selling day one digital console release in history. We have more confidence than ever that Destiny will become one of the iconic franchises of this generation, and Activision’s next billion dollar brand.”
There it is again — the ‘F’ word.
I get the impression that, for Activision, the true value of Destiny won’t be in its launch day or even its launch year. It’ll be in Bungie and Activision’s ability to sustain and serve a broad audience with new content over the next five years. Is it feasible? In the long run will Destiny be as successful as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft or even Skylanders? Currently Destiny is riding a big wave of hype bolstered by a marketing budget that’s seen the game on every advertising space known to man. The real question will be in Destiny’s sustainability over the next decade.
Comments
31 responses to “Activision: Destiny Is The Most Successful New Franchise Launch Of All Time”
Only 300 million short of the gta5 day one sales.
Except GTA5 wasn’t a new franchise…
I realise that. I’m not trying to take anything away from Bungies accomplishment. I was just curious to see how far off the mark they we’re from the all time record and thought I should post it for others to see.
“I was just curious to see how far off the mark they we’re from the all time record and thought I should post it for others to see.”
Kind of does seem like you ARE “trying to take anything away from Bungies accomplishment” especially with “how far off the mark they we’re from the all time record”.
So ONCE AGAIN, it is the Launch of a NEW Franchise. GTA5 has absolutely NO PLACE in this Record. Comparing the two in another Record is pointless to what they are saying and what thui Article is about.
Although it should be noted that if the developer was an obscure one and not Bungie then we’d not be seeing these figures. New franchise, but still being sold primarily on the Halo legacy.
Hopefully they keep the content coming, haven’t got to the endgame yet kinda seems short but cant say for sure. anyone finished it yet? seems to be a lot of hate for it from what I’ve seen online.
What you’re seeing is just the internet, where everyone over-hyped themselves for a game and it’s the games fault it didn’t live up to their ridiculously high standards. Some of the Metacritic 0/10 reviews are hilarious.
Yea that’s why I started coming here for my daily games news. Can tell those metacritic reviewers have barely touched the game.
It is pretty average, I had zero interest in it, hence zero hype, and I think it’s just another shooter, like the million others. The RPG loot system is fun and would give it a bit more longevity but I’m pretty bored already to be honest.
It’s also in no small part due to the fact end-game, as a concept, just isn’t appealing to as wide a range of players as the rest of the game. In a lot of ways standard MMO end-game content is like replacing the final chapter of a games story mode with co-op only Horde mode. Destiny has promised endless gameplay to a lot of people who picture that as meaning something new to do every week or two rather than PvP and artificially slowed content every two or three months.
A new planet every weekend isn’t realistic but a lot of people aren’t interested in becoming invested enough their games for realistic end-game content to be enjoyable.
To hell with the next decade, I’m more concerned about whether my hype for it will be sustainable for the next month. Or less. I really need to do some raids with friends to be able to tell, I think.
I understand that the first two expansions are supposed to drop before the end of the year.
Also, I’ve just finished the story “campaign” and pushing to level 20 now. I’ll drop in to your fireteam if you’re playing tonight and want to start doing some of the daily challenges/strikes/etc.
How long is the story? I’m at level 16 and I’m not even past the moon yet. I’ve been screwing around and doing PvP, but if 20 is the cap and I’m doing content designed for level 10-12 does that mean there’s only a few more planets to go?
About 20 missions? 5 missions per planet and 4 planets (Earth, Moon, Venus, Mars). That doesn’t include the Patrol Mission and the Strikes or Raids. I’ve probably put in about 12 hours so far but still only at level 18.The cap for leveling is 20, but after that you can increase your “effective level” by increasing your Light. The current theoretical cap is 30, I believe.
Absolutely Considering it’s on console only, the REAL question is what will Destiny’s sustainability be over the next few MONTHS. Seriously … when the next COD or BF comes out, Destiny will be a memory of the past.
It you WANT sustainability, you launch games on the PC … that is as long as you have faith in your IP. Hell! There are people are still playing UO and EQ1!
I don’t have a console so it doesn’t bother me much but I really hope this game doesn’t end up being another titanfall
No, as fun as it is, once the hype dies down and everyone has played the base game to death most people will move on.
Part of why it is great now is that everyone is playing + finally a big next gen game. In a year, with more games out and the player-base fragmented by overpriced DLC?
I have my doubts.
Hopefully it continues to thrive. I’d much rather pay to expand my game than pay a subscription or see a rehashed version of the same game with some different maps every year.
I’m really questioning the survivability of Destiny. It’s fun to play, but it was severely over-hyped as something “new” when really it’s just a well done shooter game combining modes taken from Borderlands, Left 4 Dead and Unreal Tournament. It kind of sounds like the focus has been the end game, which is great and all, but they could have made getting there a little more interesting. Also, for $500 million dollars I’d have thought they could get some better voice acting and writers. Grumbles aside though, it’s a fun game to play with friends.
“it was severely over-hyped as something “new” when really it’s just a well done shooter game combining modes taken from Borderlands, Left 4 Dead and Unreal Tournament”
The Activision design process at work. Still, it’s good Bungie has a new cash cow, I guess. Kind of a shame they booted Marty and a lot of other employees though.
That $500 million includes a butt tonne of marketing. I’d be willing to bet the lion’s share was.
That’s probably a smart bet! I’m glad Activision have another cash cow now though, Guitar Hero’s empty throne was getting dusty.
I am enjoying it, but within 10 years the franchise will be milked and become a yearly thing, knowing Activision.
New content and lots of it. There’ll be the ‘hardcore’ players who smash through games in a day and then say they’re too short, but there’s plenty to do in Destiny still I think. Hopefully the two DLCs will be sizable but after that hopefully there’s more than just a new map and guns every month or two. Yes people will mostly be playing the crucible after they’ve played the single player to death, but new areas, dungeons, planets even will keep people playing for some time yet.
Actually, the key word here is ship….. They have shipped $500 million worth of units to stores. This is meaningless! All this says is how great their production and distribution capabilities are. Giving $500 million worth of stock to retailers does NOT mean that they necessarily sell!
It’s PR speak and corporate pandering – that is it. Sold through numbers are much more important.
They have taken the page from the microsoft play book just say how many were shipped not how many were sold
Would they have the day one sold numbers yet, how frequent do the companies that track actual sales update their data. Seems like an easy early press release. I’m sure I’ve seen it before.
That said if a store wasn’t confident in selling the stock they would be unlikely to have placed an order with Activision for the game.
Wow that Activision guy can’t stop patting himself on the back. “aren’t we great everybody? Oh how great we are! We are the absolute best!”
I have been Enjoying destiny for the most part, it’s never a good idea to get caught up in the hype of a new launch and you will always end up with people who have impossibly high standards that the game will never live up too (hence the ridiculous 0/10’s (surely a game gets at least a 1/10 if you put the disk in and it actually works??)). As much as I am enjoying it, I wouldn’t say it’s exactly blowing my mind, I’m a fan of Peter Dinklage but his voice acting in Destiny is pretty uninspiring, as is the voice of my own female character. I was surprised and a little disappointed to be revisiting the exact same map locations multiple times in the first few hours and the missions themselves aren’t the most immersive and interesting you will ever find in a game.
My main issue with this game, is how it plays out in single player mode. Unfortunately I am the first of my PC loving friends to get one of the new consoles which means Destiny is purely a solo game for me and in my experience so far, the other people that you occasionally see sharing the map with you are about as useful as a snooze button on a smoke alarm. I am yet to successfully communicate to any of them that I need their help with a particular mission, or to follow me somewhere, and it’s moments like this that you realise why MMO’s just aren’t going to work as well away from the PC platform with all the wonderful chat box’s. It does give me a morbid sense of interest to see how ESO fares mind you.
My experience with Solo play so far is that it can be quite difficult, as much as the missions say 1-3 players, a lot of the bigger fights just feel like they were made for multiple players. There has been a number of big fights that seem to come in waves, and I have died 5 or 6 times before I get the routine down and win. It’s also worth noting that when you die, as there is no team mates to revive you, it restarts you from the last checkpoint, which is always right before the big battle started. Admittedly my aim with a controller leaves a lot to be desired these days, but my overall impression so far is that this is very much a game to be played with friends not solo, and the MMO component of the story lines could be replaced with a similar setup to Borderlands without taking away from the experience.
ESO was terrible… I only played it for 1 day because 3 of my friends did (and I got it for $30)… Uninstalled the next day.
Yeah i dnt knw why im on AU when im from NA, but preach brother! They could have spent less money on big name voice actors who contribute basic one liners to the most vauge story in video game history, and more money on keeping me interested.
Not sure what the hype was for. I grabbed it on day one. But it’s just cross gen shooter with far less content than anyone expected in it.
Had the two announced DLCs been included, I think the content would have been enough.
As it stands, I’ve stopped Destiny, and went back to Metro Redux.