Activision said that Destiny, its latest MMO/shooter franchise for the Xbox and Playstation, pulled in $350 million in the first five days it went on sale. Activision is calling it the “best-selling new video game franchise launch of all time”—which is an interesting way to spin the numbers.
Grand Theft Auto V, which capped an already successful series, sold $1 billion worth of revenue in just three days on just the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 alone—and about $800 million on the first day. And Call of Duty:Ghosts did even better, recording $1 billion of revenue in just a single day.
Stilll, Sony said that engagement with the game was superb. Gamers, at least, are playing it.
“Destiny fans played more than 100 million hours of the game in the first week. That’s on par with the engagement levels of our most popular Call of Duty games, which obviously is an industry leader,” said Eric Hirshberg, chief executive of Activision Publishing, in a statement.
Whether Destiny is profitable, of course, is another matter entirely. Although one report speculated that Destiny’s budget was $500 million across several games, Activision Blizzard recently debunked that figure. “But the budget for Destiny, including associated marketing costs and pizza Wednesdays, is nowhere near 500 million dollars,” the company said in a blog post.
At press time, Destiny had pulled in an aggregate score of 79 via Metacritic, for reviewers that had played the Xbox One version of the game, and a 76 for the Playstation 4. But on the Xbox 360, which had not compiled enough critical scores to compile an average, the average of 281 user rankings was 4.6 out of 10.
“A load of wasted potential, but with solid mechanics, Destiny is representative of an industry with no ideas and more of a focus on spectacle than mechanics,” “lmJTHM” reported.
If you’ve played Destiny, what are your thoughts? And can Activision make a successful franchise out of it? Give us your reviews below.